MCLC: Humour in Chinese Life and Culture review

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Humour in Chinese Life and Culture review
Source: The China Quarterly 218  (June 2014): 587 – 589.
Humour in Chinese Life and Culture: Resistance and Control in Modern Times. Edited by JESSICA MILNER DAVIS and JOCELYN CHEY. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013 xxii + 348 pp. $25.00 ISBN 978-988-8139-24-8.
Modest in its claims although ambitious in its scope, Humour in Chinese Life and Culture, edited by Jessica Milner Davis and Jocelyn Chey, is a recent contribution to the growing body of scholarship in English dealing with Chinese humour. The editors perhaps have a good reason to be modest because, as they acknowledge, humour is highly culturally bound – this is where the “Chineseness” of Chinese humour lies, they remark (companion volume, pp. 12–13) – and, therefore, understanding Chinese humour entails an excellent knowledge of its socio-cultural background. Because of this, all of the contributors make serious efforts in unpacking jokes, ironies, satires and so on, and the long list of notes compiled at the end of the book is a telling exhibition of these efforts.
This anthology is indeed ambitious; together with its companion volume, Humour in Chinese Life and Letters, compiled by the same editors, this project covers the whole of Chinese history and the vast cultural sphere of Greater China. Moreover, the editors believe that to study humour, “an inclusive approach and the use of broad concepts and definitions are vital” (companion volume, p. 5). Further, constant cross-references between the two volumes not only tell their inherent connection, but also showcase a cross-boundary and transdisciplinary (p. xxi) vision on the part of the editors. Therefore ideally the introductory chapters of the two volumes, by Chey and by Davis respectively, should be read together. While Chey’s focuses more on the historical aspect of Chinese humour, Davis’s situates humour within a more contemporary cross-cultural context. Together, both pieces aim to serve as a comprehensive overview of the subject.
Davis associates humour (youmo) with Chinese modernity and the “concept of the individual” (p. 2), which is exemplified not only in the current volume, but also in Joseph C. Sample’s translation of Lin Yutang’s essay “On Humour” and Qian Suoqiao’s discussion of the Analects Fortnightly journal and “On Humour” compiled in the companion volume. Diran John Sohigian’s chapter on Qian Zhongshu, then, is an interesting dialogue with those on Lin because, for Sohigian, Lin and Qian represent the two major camps – namely Meredithian and Bergsonian – of modern Chinese humour in a cross-cultural context. While Lin “incorporates Meredith’s notion of the ‘Comic Spirit’ into Chinese Confucian and Daoist notions of tolerance and detachment” (companion volume, pp. 202–203), Qian, Sohigian argues, based his youmo on Henri Bergson’s philosophy that focuses on “the self as a living person interacting with the mechanical (both mechanistic thinking and actual machines)” (p. 24).
Barak Kushner’s chapter explores the image of Japan in 20th-century Chinese humour. The author extends his expertise in Japanese studies to an examination of the connections between modern media in China, including newspapers and magazines, cartoons, oral comedy and films, and the representations of Japan found therein. The author documents the cursory treatment of Japan in the late Qing and early Republican eras, the “Japan as Devil” image during the interwar period and during the Second World War, the extension of the devil theme into the post-war Maoist period, and the much diversified (exotic, modern) yet inveterate (brutal, infantile) representations of Japan in the contemporary period. While it is insightful of the author to point out that it is Chinese politics and domestic concerns that shape the comic representation and imagination of Japan, this argument, in my view, can be balanced by Japan’s role in 20th-century Sino-Japanese relations. In his conclusion, Kushner singles out the loss of xiangsheng’s comic edge as a result of political control as a reason why Japan remains a persistent target of Chinese satire. In fact, this is one of the few times when xiangsheng (cross-talks) is touched upon in the entire volume. This, for me, is unfortunate because, along with xiaopin (comic skits) and sitcoms, xiangsheng still serves as one of the major forms of public comic entertainment in China today.
John A. Lent and Xu Ying’s chapter focusses on cartoons (manhua) produced by what they call the first- and second-generation cartoonists, including Feng Zikai, Liao Bingxiong, Hua Junwu, Ding Cong and Fang Cheng. Through their interviews with those cartoonists, their families and friends, the authors demonstrate the characteristics of their works, namely, “indirectness of expression, skilful use of language, application of aesthetic and artistic principles, and seriousness of purpose” (p. 84). Implied in this argument is a sense of loss on the part of those older-generation car- toonists seeing new cartoons that have been warped by contemporary commercialism.
Xu Ying, with her father Xu Quanzhong, a veteran Beijing-based actor and professor of acting, contributes another chapter on hesuipian (the Happy-New-Year comic movie) to the volume. More descriptive than analytical, this chapter traces the history of comic filmmaking in the People’s Republic, and situates hesuipian within this context. Xu’s excellent mastery of filmic information, however, lends less to a theoretical investigation of humour than to a commentary on individual films and directors. Xu Ying’s interview with Xu Quanzhong at the end of the chapter provides a view of someone from inside the system. Though informational, what is obviously lacking in their history of hesuipian in the PRC is any mention of its counterpart in Hong Kong, from which the mainland filmmakers directly copied the genre in the 1990s.
Marjorie K. M. Chan and Jocelyn Chey’s chapter is a rigorous study, with a cultural-linguistic approach, of comic Cantopop in the 1960s. Focusing on three exemplary songs, they examine the ways in which the use of rusheng (checked) syllables in Cantonese combined with the use of quick tempo, “vernacular Cantonese, English loan words, visual imagery and references to Western lifestyle that are self-mocking of the period, and joking verbal links that poke fun at the leading character” (p. 120) created light-hearted humour, which reflected “that decade of transition, with its hybrid mix of old and new cultures, traditional and modern, as well as Chinese and Western” (p. 128).
Christopher G. Rea’s chapter is an extensive study of the e’gao (spoofing) phenomenon in contemporary China. Connecting this internet-based parody form to its predecessors in other media and its global counterparts, Rea conceptualizes e’gao within the paradigm of what he calls “a theory of relativity,” which, in his opinion, helps illuminate what is “Chinese” in this type of humour. Included in this theory are “a relativistic attitude towards the appropriation and transmission of texts,” “the temporal dimension of e’gao’s seeming ‘gay relativity’,” and “the discourse of moral relativism surrounding e’gao” (pp. 170–171, emphasis in the original), which throw light upon the material basis on which e’gao arises, its relationship with those in power, and its social effects. Yet, it is not entirely clear in what ways amateurism and shared sentiment, though highly relevant features of e’gao, are integral parts of his theory of relativity.
The following three chapters are comparative studies of humour in China/Taiwan and other countries. Heather J. Crawford’s research demonstrates the “[s]imilarities in media consumption habits, and the active and growing demand for humour” (p. 190) among Gen X and Y – the most active groups of new media consumers – in China, Australia and the US. Although the chapter is titled “Humour in new media,” it focuses instead on humour in the traditional media of TV and movies; the opening section that does address humour in new media, however, overlaps with Rea’s chap- ter. While it is constructive to work towards “theories of cultural convergence” (p. 190), it is also debatable whether some of the Western paradigms employed are compatible with the Chinese situation. For instance, in what way are Gen X and Y applicable when Chinese people mainly see themselves in the categories of “post-70s,” “post-80s” and so on?
Using quantitative analysis, Guo-Hai Chen’s study of the role humour plays in class- rooms in China, the US and Canada demonstrates that Chinese people define humour in a narrower sense, and that the use of humour in the classroom is beneficial to instruc- tion. Hsueh-Chih Chen, Yu-Chen Chan, Willibald Ruch and René T. Proyer’s joint study of gelotophobia (a fear of being laughed at), gelotophilia (enjoying being laughed at) and katagelasticism (enjoying laughing at others) in Taiwan and Switzerland sug- gests that cultural differences – whether a society is collectivistic, hierarchical, conformist or individualistic – contribute to people’s “dispositions toward ridicule and being laughed at,” a phrase that summarizes the three terms above (p. 220).
Xue-Liang Ding’s chapter is based on examples that the author has collected over three decades, and convincingly showcases that quality political humour – that is, a “combination of critical spirit, sharp observation, subtle sarcasm and a bit of philosophical contemplation” (p. 232) – appear under the conditions that 1) human-made, “extraordinarily severe, even tragic, social, economic and political experiences” have taken place in the recent past; 2) that these experiences “should have extended over at least two generations”; and 3) that “a small, free space of a transitional nature” exists in which risky political humour can flourish (p. 235).
As I have tried to show, this book offers broader perspectives on humour than the strict paradigm of “Resistance and Control” defined in its title. Admittedly, a single project cannot cover everything, and humour, particularly defined in a broader sense, has numerous manifestations that demand further studies. Yet, given the obvious dif- ficulty of studying Chinese humour in English and the excellent work that all of the contributors have done, this comprehensive anthology will prove to be an essential contribution to the burgeoning yet thorny field of Chinese humour.
HAOMIN GONG
hxg171 at case.edu
by denton.2 at osu.edu on September 22, 2014
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