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Article
Contrary to the stereotype of Chinese people as serious, I have always found that Chinese people like to laugh and are generally very funny. But it is only acceptable to be humorous in relaxed social situations where people are not concerned about their “face,” a key concept in Chinese society that refers to a facade of personal dignity, reputation, or prestige. Because Chinese are often concerned about their face in front of foreigners, and because much of Chinese humor is based on quick verbal exchanges, foreigners who don’t speak Chinese rarely get the chance to appreciate Chinese humor. There is a large variety of comic performances - “crosstalk” comedy, the most popular form of stand-up comedy, involves a rapid exchange between a funny man and a straight man (like Laurel and Hardy), often combined with opera singing and the telling of folktales. The crosstalk below, performed by the famous team of Ma Ji and Zhao Yan, was recorded in 1985 but can still be heard on radio stations today.
Ma Ji (1934-2006) was the stage name of Ma Shuhuai, borrowed from the Chinese transliteration of the name of the protagonist in the 1949 Hungarian Film “Mattie (Maji) the Gooseboy.” A member of the “seventh generation” of crosstalk comedy who trained many of the best artists of the next generation, in 1985 he was chosen as the best of the “Ten Big Stars of Comedy” in China. Zhao Yan (1951) is the stage name of Zhao Dianxie, a talented entertainer from a young age who began studying with Ma Ji in 1976. In 1985 he was also chosen as one of the “Ten Big Stars of Comedy.” He is still one of China’s most popular comedians, and as this essay was going to press he was just back from visiting the earthquake disaster area in Sichuan, where he had been reminding the children how to laugh again.
This is included this in a series of essays on the Olympic Games because it involves many sports-related puns, showing that Chinese are able to find humor in sports, and counteracting the perception that Chinese sports are only about the pursuit of gold medals.
 | | Susan Brownell with Zhao Yan and Ma Ji's son. |
Ma Ji, Zhao Yan: An Evening of Crosstalk Entertainment
Beijing City Recording Studio, 1985
“A Hundred Ways to Boast”[1] Ma: Let’s us two, right here, have a sports contest.
Zhao: Where?
M: Ah, on the stage.
Z: Sports are allowed on the stage?
M: We won’t do a large-scale sport.
Z: Then what will we do?
M: Let’s...
Z: Chess?
M: They can’t see us play chess.
Z: Then shall we play tug-of-war?
M: Tug-of-war is a group event. Can two people do it?
Z: Then shall we box?
M: Boxing - it doesn’t matter who’s boxing who, it’s all inappropriate.[2]
Z: Then what shall we compete in?
M: Let’s us two, right here, have a boasting match.[3]
Z: Boasting?
M: Tall talk. Then and now, here and there, a braggart gets praised everywhere. There are all kinds of ways to blow hot air.
Z: What kinds of ways to blow?
M: You can blow straightforward, you can blow roundabout, you can play one-upmanship, you can play one-downmanship, there are all kinds of strange ways. [4]
Z: That’s a lot of variety.
M: Let’s use this match to sketch out what a braggart looks like.
Z: Okay.
M: Recommend it to everybody.
Z: What for?
M: Whatever kind you want to learn, you can learn.
Z: There are learners?
M: Let’s let everyone see what braggarts are like.
Z: Okay.
M: Okay?
Z: But I don’t have any experience in boasting matches.
M: That’s not important. The first time is awkward, the second time skillful. Practice makes perfect. Just boast your best and boast hard, before you’ve been boasting too long, I guarantee you’ll boast your way out of Asia and advance on the world.[5]
Z: I can boast my way out of Asia?
M: You should have confidence, you’ve got talent.
Z: What talent do I have?
M: Just wait a while and see: your face is pretty thick-skinned.
Z: Who’s thick-skinned? I can’t compare with you![6]
M: Don’t be polite. Who doesn’t know that you’re up-and-coming in the boasting world?
Z: The boasting world, eh? No way. I’m no match for an old veteran of the boasting world like you.
M: You’re too modest. The pupil’s bragging surpasses the master’s.
Z: You’re the veteran “braggart Ma, he turns one into two by boasting,” you. When a veteran goes into action, he can do the job of two.
M: The rear waves of the Yangtze River push the front waves.[7]
Z: Have we started boasting yet, or what?
M: Let’s have a friendly competition. We won’t keep points or places.[8]
Z: Fine.
M: We have to boast to our potential and boast like good sports.[9]
Z: Okay. Since that’s the way it is, I’ll just give boasting a try. Okay!
M: Good. Let the boasting match begin. Please take a seat, comrades.[10] If anyone in the audience is interested in boasting, feel free to come onstage and boast with us!
Z: Don’t expand the team.
M: Now, let the boasting match begin!
Z: Good.
M: Opposing athletes enter the arena. Bung, bung, bung!
Z: What kind of a music band is that?
M: Blowpipe musical accompaniment.
Z: They all blow together!
M: First, our seeded athlete Zhao Yan will begin. Ready!
Z: I, uh, I really have never done this thing.
M: When I say boast, we boast to the best of our ability!
Z: Of course!
M: Go ahead!
Z: Since we are here, we might as well stay and make the best of it. If you want to appreciate boasting! Nobody in the audience is better than me.
M: How so?
Z: I have more than ten years of boasting behind me.
M: You’re way behind me!
Z: How so?
M: I’ve boasted for over thirty years!
Z: Ha, ha. He’s also starting to boast.
M: I’m one-upping you.
Z: I’ve got a unique skill for boasting.
M: I’ve got a boasting secret handed down in my family for generations.
Z: I can take square and boast it round!
M: I can take short and boast it long!
Z: I can take ugly and boast it beautiful!
M: I can take the dead and boast them alive!
Z: My family is world-famous for boasting.
M: My family has been boasting for three generations.
Z: My home is a boasting workshop.
M: My home is a boasting manufacturing company. That’s a lot bigger than yours, that is.
Z: My home is a boasting limited-shareholding company.
M: My home is a boasting trust company.
Z: It’s all controlled by us. We are a world boasting center.[11] Where can you boast to now?
M: Your center there was blown out of my home by the hot air!
Z: You can really boast, you. Your crosstalk has also made great contributions to medicine.
M: It has?
Z: Lots of patients, when they hear a segment of your crosstalk, don’t even have to take medicine and they leave the hospital. A while ago there was an old lady who’d been paralyzed over eighty years. She heard a part of your crosstalk and the result was that she threw away her crutches and went galloping home.
M: That there isn’t as effective as you. A while ago you went to a crematorium to do a crosstalk. You performed one number and the living even carried the dead back home. You made the dead come alive!
Z: Your influence is still greater.
M: Aya, you’d have to say the effect of my crosstalk isn’t small.
Z: Ah, it’s really too great, I really must flatter you.
M: Why do you have to flatter me?
Z: If I don’t flatter you, can you flatter me?
M: That’s the goal!
Z: Let me tell you, Ma Ji, you have too many tricks. Ma Ji, you...
M: Ma Ji? Did Ma Ji come?
Z: Did you boast to the point that you can’t even find yourself, or what? Aren’t you Ma Ji?
M: I’m not Ma Ji.
Z: Who are you?
M: I’m not even worth mentioning.
Z: Which person are you?
M: I’m tiny little Zhao Yan.[12]
Z: Zhao Yan’s now “tiny little”? You’re Zhao Yan!
M: Right, right.
Z: Who am I?
M: You are the prestigious and universally respected Mr. Ma.
Z: Aya, he changed identities!
M: Let everybody look at Mr. Ma. The bearing of a rich man! Aya, Ma Ji, Mr. Ma, I’ve heard foreigners talk about you. Your knowledge is head and shoulders above everyone else. You could be called a living encyclopedia. Really amazing.
Z: No, no. You, Zhao Yan, are more learned than I. I’ve heard those Frenchmen say that your crosstalk is great.
M: You are also learned.
Z: Astronomy, geology, there’s nothing you don’t know.
M: How can I, Zhao Yan, compare with you in anything?
Z: I, Ma Ji, am far behind you, Zhao Yan.
M: When I, Zhao Yan, see you, Ma Ji, it’s like a little magician seeing a great wizard.
Z: Not so. When I, Ma Ji, see you, Zhao Yan, I must retreat ninety miles.
M: I, Zhao Yan, am no good.
Z: I, Ma Ji, am no good.
M: I, Zhao Yan, am nothing.
Z: Eh?
M: I, Zhao Yan, am also morally corrupt.
Z: When I die they’ll feed me to the dogs.
M: Dogs wouldn’t even eat me.
Z: That’s the limit!
M: I say, I, Zhao Yan...
Z: I don’t want to hear you say Zhao Yan.
M: There was no way out. I was boasting and just boasted myself to this point.
Z: Then just boast.
M: I’m boasting! Let’s boast! Now let us two see whose boasting ability is greater?
Z: I tell you, my abilities are too great.
M: What abilities do you have?
Z: I don’t just have ordinary abilities. I can use my ear to read books.
M: How’s that?
Z: Extrasensory perception.[13]
M: You ask around. Go ask them. I frequently use my nose to eat food. That’s greater than your ability.
Z: I, uh, I use my armpits to find mineral deposits.
M: I can use my throat to emit electricity.
Z: I can see people through walls.
M: I can see your money through your clothes.
Z: Yesterday evening I had a high fever.
M: Yesterday evening I also had a high fever.
Z: I had a temperature of 153.
M: Not as high as mine. I had a temperature of 201.
Z: I had a terrible fever. I was holding some kernels of corn in my hand and when I opened my hand they were popcorn.
M: That’s not as bad as my fever. I was feverish for three minutes and burned four big holes into the quilt.
Z: Weren’t you afraid of burning to death?
M: It was a terrible fever.
Z: Yesterday evening I asked someone to dinner.
M: Yesterday evening I also asked someone to dinner.
Z: However I boast, he boasts.
M: I’m one-upping you.
Z: I was eating along and oops! I swallowed the chopsticks. Boast, you!
M: I was eating along and oops! I swallowed the fork.
Z: I was eating along and oops! I chewed up the tray.
M: I was eating along and oops! I chewed up the pressure cooker.
Z: I was eating and oops! I wolfed down half the tabletop.
M: I was eating along and oops!
Z: What will you eat now? Well?
M: I chewed up my own nose!
Z: Could you reach it?
M: I stood on a ladder to chew it.
Z: Nonsense!
M: Boast! Go ahead!
Z: Let me tell you. I’m an old head on young shoulders.
M: I’m a lot smarter than you. I entered college when I was ten.
Z: I graduated from college when I was nine.
M: I got married when I was eight.
Z: When I was seven, our child was 13.
M: Outrageous!
Z: At least there’s no tax on boasting at the moment.[14]
M: Boast!
Z: I...when I was six, I looked like an old man.
M: When I was five I got wrinkles on my forehead.
Z: When I was four I had a hunched back.
M: When I was three I grew a beard.
Z: When I was two I went bald.
M: As soon as I was born I retired.
Z: How’s that?
M: Come on and boast. Boast!
Z: Let me tell you, I’m really tall. Real tall.
M: I’m taller than you.
Z: I’m nine feet one inch tall.
M: I’m twelve feet one inch tall.
Z: I’m still taller.
M: I’m still taller.
Z: I’m as tall as the Changbai Mountain hotel.
M: I’m two stories taller than that hotel.
Z: I’m taller.
M: I’m taller.
Z: Airplanes fly into my back here.
M: Satellites hit my feet as they go by.
Z: I’m taller.
M: I’m taller.
Z: The top of my head touches the sky when my feet are standing on the earth. There’s no way you can be taller than that!
M: I’m still taller! My upper lip touches the sky and my lower lip touches the earth.
Z: Ah, your upper lip touches the sky and your lower lip touches the earth. Then where is your face?
M: We braggarts don’t want face!
Z: Right![15]
[1] The Chinese word for boasting here is chuiniu, literally “blowing the bull.” It is part of the phrase “to blow the bull and pat the horse,” meaning “to boast and flatter.”
[2] Boxing was not practiced in China from 1959 to 1979 because it was considered bourgeois and too violent.
[3] This actually gets one of the biggest laughs in the routine. What’s so funny about a boasting match? Boasting is not proper behavior in a public forum, where people are expected to conduct themselves with decorum. However, it is a common behavior among groups of men, especially when their tongues have been loosened by a little bit of baijiu (traditional liquor).
[4] one-upmanship (boasting) vs. one-downmanship (humility)
[5] In 1980, a new guiding slogan for sports, “Break out of Asia and Advance on the World,” replaced the “Friendship First, Competition Second” of the Cultural Revolution period (1966-76).
[6] “Face is thick-skinned” is actually an insult, implying that one doesn’t care about one’s reputation and lacks moral character.
[7] A proverb that means the younger generation surpasses the older generation.
[8] A reference to the “Friendly Invitationals” that constituted Ping-Pong Diplomacy in the 1970s during the Cultural Revolution. At the height of the Cultural Revolution, competition was denounced as “medals-and-trophyism” and at one point the rebel faction even tried to eliminate referees and scores.
[9] The concept of competing to the best of one’s potential but also with a display of good sportsmanship was strongly emphasized to both athletes and spectators in the 1980s due to a general perception that sportsmanship was lacking.
[10] “Comrade” (tongzhi) was the most common way of addressing people until recently, and it is still used occasionally.
[11] When this crosstalk was recorded, these kinds of corporations were just being formed in the transition to a market economy and the exaggerated names was something new.
[12] They are now engaging in one-downmanship (excessive humility), but they have also reversed identities, so that actually each one is flattering himself and putting down the other.
[13] Extraordinary abilities were popular topics in the media in the 1980s and the following abilities were actual abilities frequently claimed by real people.
[14] Taxes did not exist in the state-planned economy. In 1985, they were still a new thing in China and as the tax law was gradually extended, people felt that soon everything would be taxed.
[15] Braggarts “don’t want face” - they don’t care about their reputations, because they are engaging in publicly unacceptable behavior.
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