Chinese language, American format, New York attitude
The jokes told in New York’s hottest new comedy club are all about tone
By R.W. | FLUSHING, QUEENS
THERE are four tones in Mandarin—five if you count the neutral tone. Saying a word in a certain way changes the meaning. For instance, ma can mean “mother” or “horse”, depending on whether the pitch stays high or dips while saying it. Des Bishop, an American comedian, found out the hard way the importance of tone. When he moved to China to learn the language, the family he lived with gave him a Chinese name, “Hansheng”. His surname was simply shortened to “Bi”, but Mr Bishop unknowingly mispronounced it for two months. His shocked new Chinese friends were too polite to tell him that he was introducing himself as “vast ocean of a cunt”.
He told similar fish-out-of water stories at the Flushing Comedy Club in New York. The appreciative audience was mostly from northern China and Taiwan. They loved that Mr Bishop, along with two other stand-up comedians, were making jokes about New York in Mandarin. Mr Bishop, who created the comedy club temporarily housed in a tea house, said “It was great to speak Chinese and makes jokes about New York.”
Long considered New York’s “other Chinatown”, the bustling Queens neighbourhood is well known for its striving Asian families. (Helen Lee, for instance, a prominent property developer began college-preparatory classes at a very young age: "I was seven or eight.") But the area is coming into its own as a destination. Manhattanites and Brooklyn hipsters love dim sum brunches and Sichuan dinners. Young bankers and lawyers are abandoning Manhattan for high-density Flushing, a transit hub 40 minutes from midtown. American-born Chinese are snapping up the luxury condominiums as soon as they are built. Empty nesters are moving there from suburban Long Island. Tech sorts work and live there and a few million square feet of commercial space is in the works. Artists, like Awkwafina, a Chinese-American rapper, have performed there.
As for comedy, “demand is there; demand is huge,” says Mr Bishop, a Flushing native who spent more than two years in China learning Mandarin. While there he helped nurture Beijing’s nascent stand-up community. The trouble is getting comics who speak Mandarin. He says there are only about 30 or so Chinese stand-up comics in the country of 1.4 billion people. Although there is a long tradition of comedy in China, western-style stand-up is very new. No other art form fully captures modern life in China says Tony Chou (pictured), a Beijing-based comedian. Mr Chou tells observational jokes and funny stories about living with his roommate, something older generations did not do.
Traditional Chinese comedy, xiangsheng or cross-talk, is a very different form. The genre, which uses clever puns, speedy banter and literary references, feels dated, but it is still popular even among Chinese immigrants. Dashan, one of xiangsheng’s biggest stars, was recently mobbed walking down Flushing’s Main Street. He regularly has television audiences in China in the hundreds of millions. He performed at the Flushing Comedy Club’s first all-Mandarin night. (The club alternates between all-Mandarin and all-English gigs.) Ronny Chieng, a “Daily Show” contributor originally from Malaysia, performed at the club’s opening English night.
Most comedians in China stay away from the three “T’s”, Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen, but there is ample freedom in China to discuss most things, including topical events. One Chinese friend told Mr Bishop that in America, you can make fun of the American government. This is true in China too: the Chinese also make fun of the American government.
For his act, Mr Bishop humourously outlined, accompanied by a TED talk-style slide show and video clips, not just his struggles with the language and the culture, but his attempts to find a wife. His Chinese friends were horrified that the then 38-year old Mr Bishop, a household name in Ireland, was still single. In China he is considered a “leftover”, or sheng nu. To put matters right, he appeared on two popular television dating programmes. Alas, he didn’t find his bride. Potential mates thought him too old. One of the contestants explained that Mr Bishop was only a few years younger than her mother, to which he responded in impressive Mandarin, “Is your mother hot?”
