The language of laughs

Tony Chou performs a stand-up comedy routine in Chinese on October 26 at the Hot Cat Club. Photo: Courtesy of Chou

Beijing, one of the origin cities of Chinese traditional crosstalk, is now seeing a growing local interest in Western stand-up comedy.

Hot Cat Club holds open-mic comedy nights twice a week: in English on Wednesday, hosted by Comedy Club China, and in Chinese on Saturday, hosted by Beijing Talk Show Club. Both comedy nights are popular among foreigners living in Beijing and Chinese comedy lovers, and have attracted media attention from home and abroad.

Comedy and linguistics

Zhou Guangchao prefers being called Tony Chou. The Shandong Province native is bilingual, so he's able to perform with both clubs at Hot Cat. He just returned from a trip to the US where he immersed himself in stand-up, both watching and performing. He's now preparing with the Beijing Talk Show Club for their first commercial showcase at Stars Drama Village later this month, he told the Global Times.

"I'm Tony Chou. Like every other product you value in your life, I was made in China," he often says at the start of his English showcase. Finding humor in studying English and joking about the cultural gap between China and Western countries make his Western audiences crack up.

A June feature in The Atlantic said, "He (Chou) might not be Russell Peters, but for the audience at the Hot Cat Club, he's comedy gold."

Without any educational background specialized in English or any study abroad experience, Chou, 30, is the only regular Chinese comedian in Comedy Club China. He has ambitions to make comedy his full-time job. Some are curious about how he can so confidently do his routine in English.

"Language is only the tool for me to express my humor," Chou told the Global Times.

Part-time comedian

Though some comedy is universal, Chou prepares different jokes for his English acts and Chinese acts, and sometimes for those places where he performs for Chinese people but in English, he prepares something a little different from both.

"The humor needs to be linked to culture," said Chou, "The foreign audiences here are mostly interested in China, culture shock and the relation between China and their home countries, while Chinese audiences care more about daily lives and relationships."

Chou, 30, was an English teacher at New Oriental School before he became a reporter for CCTV in 2009. The experience of working in front of the camera allowed him to feel comfortable in front of audiences.

"For Chinese crosstalk, most performers need to follow a professional teacher, but most Western comedians start from halfway," said Chou, meaning they came from another line of work.

Chou had never considered becoming a comedian until he saw Joe Wong at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association in 2010. Wong is also a "halfway" comedian, who previously worked for science and medicine.

In an interview with Life Week magazine, he said Wong's performance opened a door to a brand new world for him.

"Most members of Comedy Club China are part-time comedians," Chou said. "We perform at the open-mic and receive invitations to commercial shows if we get good feedback from the audience."

Chou also said there are many Chinese comedy clubs in other cities in China, such as Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenzhen where performers can build an audience.

Setting the stage

Comedy Club China was founded in 2011 by some overseas comedy enthusiasts living in Beijing. The president of the club, Toby Jarman, approached Hot Cat owner Li Lei about starting an open-mic night in March 2012.

"They had no idea what stand-up comedy was but they liked the idea of attracting more customers," Jarman said in an interview with The Atlantic.

Inviting foreign bands to perform monthly, Hot Cat attracts quite a number of overseas audience members - friends of the bands or fans. These expats became the first steady audience for the stand-up comedy nights on Wednesdays. After going on for more than a year, the stand-up shows now have an average attendance of about 80 people, quite a crowd for the small hutong bar, Li told the Global Times.

Considering how well the English comedy nights were doing, Li decided to use his club as the stage for Chinese open-mic night Saturdays when the Beijing Talk Show Club approached him earlier this year.

The Beijing Talk Show Club was founded four years ago by Mu Dequan, also known by his stage name Xijiangyue, and his partner. According to Mu, the club has more than 30 regular comedians now, most of whom fell in love with Western stand-up comedy through watching videos online.

Wong's success in the US has inspired many Chinese audiences to pursue this type of comedy, and Wong himself has joined the Chinese open-mic nights at Hot Cat when he is in China, Li said.

Comparisons to crosstalk

Mu is devoted to promoting stand-up comedy in China full-time, as he told the Global Times.

Though the open-mic nights and showcases by the Beijing Talk Show Club are performed in Chinese, the style is totally Western.

When asked to compare Western comedy to Chinese crosstalk, Mu said they differ in many ways.

"Crosstalk is coarse and traditional, usually focusing on the stories around the neighborhood and between men and women, and is especially preferred by older citizens," he said. "Our stand-up act is mostly about current affairs and is more impromptu, and most of our audiences are white-collar and with higher educational backgrounds."

For Chou, crosstalk is acting as someone else. Stand-up comedy is just him.

"It feels like some kind of speech, and I can just be myself and say what I am thinking about," he said.