Crosstalks

Crosstalks, or xiangsheng, (comic dialog, monolog, or group comedy, three, four or five-person xiangsheng), evolved out of popular joke telling and is, in essence, a satirical form.  Some scholars have traced xiangsheng all the way back to the Han Dynasty (221 BCE - 206 CE), but it seems more likely that the form as we know it today took its distinctive shape only in the Ming Dynasty (14th-17th centuries). This humorous, satirical genre is most frequently defined, by artists and scholars alike as "yuyan yishu," "the art of language," "linguistic art," or "speech art," and its uses all manner of incisive language, as well as the techniques mentioned below, to point up social, political, and personal shortcomings, deficiencies, and contradictions.  Since 1957, however, a kind of laudatory xiangsheng has come into existence, which praises the new society and its accomplishments, although the genre, on the whole, remains a sharply satirical one. The most common form of xiangsheng performed is the two-person variety, for which one performer is the "joke cracker" (dougende) and the other the "joke setter" (penggende). The "joke cracker" is an "outlandish," clever fellow who talks his way in and out of ridiculous situations, while the "joke-setter" tries to make sense of it all, which is usually impossible. Routines can last from twenty to fifty or more minutes and involve various combinations of the following four essential elements of xiangsheng: shuo: narrating or telling; xue: imitating; dou: joking; chang: singing. Aside from a certain amount of slap-stick humor and clowning, xiangsheng derives its humor from baofu, punch lines. These baofu are, traditionally, based on the following techniques:25 misunderstanding; coincidence; repetition; exaggeration; comparison; stubborn arguments; building and letting down; simile, metaphor; half-uttered remarks; skewed meanings and twisted explanations; witty words and clever arguments; self-contradiction; and puns.It should be obvious that xiangsheng, the heart of which is satire, can be politically dangerous if not monitored carefully.  In China today it is used, as it always was, to highlight social, political, and personal evils, but only after those evils have been recognized as such by the prevailing authorities.  When the Gang of Four was finally ousted in 1976 after Mao's death, xiangsheng—through its relentless and biting satire of the bad guys—was quick to serve as an outlet for the pent-up anguish and anger of the population.While xiangsheng is a northern genre in origin, in spite of its popularity throughout China, there are counterparts in southern and western China, though of more recent origin.  Shanghai and the Zhejiang area, for example, have developed a similar form known as xieju (comic skits with two people), which is only a few decades old.  There is also an earlier form from the 1920's called du jiao xi (solo skit). It was my impression while in China that humorous genres of storytelling are taking over the stage, radio, and television, while audiences for the more traditional, narrative genres were dwindling.