A Chinese Sense of Humor

OR HOW GENRE IS A SLIPPERY FISH -- NOT QUITE THIS, NOT QUITE THAT

Recently, I got thrown a question about Chinese comedy. What makes the Chinese laugh? Or for those Relativists in the crowd, what do I perceive to be the vehicle of comedy and its source of power for the students I teach in China, specifically in Shanxi province, specifically in Taigu City, specifically in Nong Da campus, specifically the small handful on undergraduate English majors and the rather large handful of graduate students with varying majors, granting truth to the fact that any theory I suggest will inevitably be solely based on my educated viewpoint and not match the locals' opinions on the subject with any reasonable certainty? Well readers, I do not know. The Chinese (i.e. China-Shanxi-Nong Da) funny bone is an elusive prize, similar to the holy grail in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: very alluring but at this moment totally unattainable. Like the knights of lore, I have sense glimses of it...while teaching. This past week I taught my students about movies and genre. I saw the grail in the game "Guess the Genre", where my students had to create a dialogue in a secret genre I assigned them. They would perform the dialogue and the rest of the class had to guess which genre it was. Amidst the giggles, I noticed some patterns that I will share with you, so that you can laugh and also wonder to yourself, "What is this crazy comedy thing anyway?"

[Author's note: I ad-libed most of the phrasing in the dialogues. The general sense of each scene is preserved, but my students did not necessary use the words I gave them in this post. I did not record the scenes nor do I have a written transcript of them, so ad-libing is the best I can do.]

Scene 1: Comedy
A male student stands with his back to the audience, waiting alone. A group of students stand away from him, starring at him from behind.

Boy 1: Hey, look at that hot girl.
Girl 1: She's so beautiful.
Girl 2: Wow, she's so hot. Let's go talk to her.

Alone boy turns around to face the audience.

Boy 2: Where is the hot girl?

The other students stare at him with shocked and stunned faces.

*Everyone in the audience laughs.*


Scene 2: Comedy
One female student stands next the teacher's podium on stage right, four student "monkeys" stand in a line across from her on stage left.

Girl: I'm a journalist. There are 5 monkeys in the room. What do you do monkey?
Monkey 1: I eat, sleep, and beat Doe-Doe.
Girl: What do you do monkey?
Monkey 2: I eat, sleep, and beat Doe-Doe.
Girl: What do you do monkey?
Monkey 3: I eat, sleep, and beat Doe-Doe.
Girl: What do you do monkey?
Monkey 4: I eat and sleep.
Girl: Why don't you beat Doe-Doe with your friends?
Monkey 4: I am Doe-Doe.

*Everyone in the audience laughs.*


Scene 3: Comedy
A washing machine and laundry basket are drawn on the chalk board. One student enters the classroom and sits in the front row.

Student: I want to see a movie.

The student plays some silly, cartoon-like introductory music off of her cell phone that plays for 30 seconds. Two other students enter. One is playing a little kid and other is playing the little kid's pet.

The little kid plays with her pet, and makes cartoon noises instead of words, sometimes saying something that sounds like Mama.

(offstage) Mom: Do your laundry!

The little kid puts (or has put already) her pet into the laundry basket. She dumps the laundry basket into the washing machine. The pet spins in front of the picture of the washing machine.

Girl: Mama.

Mom enters.

Mom: Where's our pet?

The pet is found by Mom in washing machine, presumably dead by drowning.

*Everyone in the audience laughs.*



Scene 4: Comedy?
A male student is standing alone in the center of the stage. Another student approaches him.

Student 1: Who's this?
Boy: What?
Student 1: She's very pretty! Bye.

Student 1 exits. Another student approaches him.

Student 2: Would you introduce me to your girlfriend?
(pause)
Student 2: Hi Emily!
Boy: Who's Emily?
Student 2: You're lucky to have such a pretty girlfriend. I have to go.
Boy: No one's here! I don't have a girlfriend.
Student 2: Bye Emily!

Student 2 exits. Another student approaches him.

Student 3: Hi Emily.
Boy: No one's here!
Student 3: Emily is such a good girl. She is very smart, and polite, and beautiful...

Boy freaks out.

*Everyone in the audience laughs.*

[The intended genre of this scene is horror. I seemed to be the only one in the room who did not know this.]


Well what was that about, folks? I'm still not sure. Give me a few more months of living here before those seem at all funny.

From here on out, this post is a smorgasbord of entertaining moments from or colored by my movie-themed classes. Enjoy!

* * *

Here are some honorable mentions from the "Guess the Genre" dialogues. I like these moments for being amusing, imaginative, and awesome.

• Conducting an adorable Romeo and Juliet scene played by 2 boys (genre: love story)


• Flashing the overhead lights and mysteriously opening and closing the classroom door, hand-free (genre: horror)


• Getting bribed by your own cook without realizing it (genre: comedy)


• Pulling out a cell phone while saying "This is a time machine!" (genre: science fiction)


• Playing a violent police scene with guns, burglars, and arrests with an all-female cast (genre: action)

* * *

Most Frequently Mentioned Movies by my Students in my Movie Classes
For better or worse and in no particular order
Harry Potter
Avatar
2012
Kung Fu Panda
Forest Gump
Titanic
Twilight (which is pronounced "Tweee-light")
Toy Story
Mr & Mrs Smith
Hands Up (Chinese movie)
Shrek
American Pie
Resident Evil
Transformers
August Rush
The Matrix
The Ring
The Pursuit of Happyness

* * *

I had my own comedy occur in my own house a few days ago. In the spirit of understanding comedy, here is a scene from my my comedic documentary of a life:

Genre: Comedy

Setting: My house

Main Actors: Alexandra’s 2 desks,
Chinese handymen, Us the housemates

Plot: The house lost electricity.
So handymen came and stoond on this innocent bystander (the desk) to fix the electric wires in the ceiling. Well we went to class, crossed our fingers, and prayed for electric heat and Internet. And the power came back on, but the desk was no more: important parts had come apart. Later the same day, the same handymen come barging into Alexandra’s room, and start emptying her desk. They then start pulling and pushing this dead desk. The once small but terminal crack breaks more and more inch by inch as the handymen pull the desk out of the house. By the front door, the poor desk is in 3 pieces. Upon reaching the truck, it’s in 5. At the same time, a new desk is magically swept in. In a 15-minute flash, life is suddenly back to normal: power, desk, and all. Alexandra and just couldn’t believe our eyes.

On Thick Clothes

HOW TO STAY WARM IN CHINA

In China we don't have warm clothes. We have thick clothes. Literally. When I packed lots of pairs of standard-issue long underwear, I thought I'd be fine. But since none of the buildings on campus are heated until Mid-November and it's already in the single digits here (in centigrade of course), simply having your long underwear on hand does not cut it.

Lynn took me shopping for thick clothes. They sell long underwear that has a 1/4 of an inch thick layer of fleecy material lining it. And you wear these thick clothes under shirts and pants. They also sell these adorable little dresses that are similarly thick. Can you imagine it? A sleeveless dress that is supposed to act as an indoor jacket?

An "indoor jacket" is not an oxymoron here, in all the restaurants it is too cold to take off your outdoor clothes. In my classroom and my own home, I can only take off one of my many layers.

What is my usual outfit? Long underwear (top and bottom), pants and a top, wool socks, an insulating jacket, a heavier jacket, a hat, scarf, and gloves, and sometimes boots so my feet do not get cold. This may sound like a lot for the low forty's, but let me point out that you've probably never spent time in buildings that were not heated at this temperature. Winter is a lot more bitter when it's allowed to follow you inside. Luckily I have an electric heater, but as soon as I leave the room it's heating, it's back to "being outside" again.

Lynn and I finally found me something suitable to help me stay warm: a bright red, part-wool pea coat with little pleats that spins as well as a skirt does, complimented by a punk-y black and white star scarf. My students and fellow English teachers think I look super Chinese now. Upon entering one of my classes wearing the coat, I received "ooo"s and "ahhh"s and "pretty girl!". I like my coat, and I love that I am now not constantly shivering.

Bring it, winter!

A Small Present from a Student (Pictures)

Hello from...the Radio!

OR HOW I GOT ONTO NPR'S ALL SONGS CONSIDERED

A few weeks ago I submitted a recorded story to "Tunes That Got You Through Your Teens", an episode of NPR's All Songs Considered. It was accepted! Check me out around 00:06:30 of the 45-minute podcast.

Click here to download the show!


Or follow this link to the episode's page:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130654846

This photograph is from a local paper who wrote a story on the American teachers in Taigu.

Vacation at Last!

OR HOW TEACHING SUNDAYS, HAVING TWO VACATIONS IN A ROW, AND BEING A VERY CURIOUS PERSON LEADS TO A LIFE WELL LIVED: REVIVING, REGAINING, RECLAIMING, REMAKING

Hello from China! It has been too long since I have told you of my adventures. There is a reason for my internet silence. The problem is that I have too many adventures, too long of recovery times from said adventures, and more personal drama than 1 individual aught to acquire in 3 weeks' time. So folks remember it's not you, it's me.

Now back to the blogging.

China loves to pack in the holidays. Already we have had 3 -- Teachers' Day, Mid-Autumn Day, and National Day. And it's only the beginning of October! On Teachers' Day, I received a bouquet of flowers from a family next door: a super nice couple who speaks English with an adorable kid who draws cute cards. Mid-Autumn Day was our first official vacation period. But these things can come with a price. We taught the Sunday before break and the Sunday after break. Picture this: a 4-day work week, followed by a 5-day Mid-Autumn Day vacation, followed by a 5-day work week, followed by a 10-day National Day vacation. Can we please stop having bizarre vacation periods and just teach a normal schedule? Please?

Ah but for this price, I had a great adventure. Lynn, my language tutor, invited me to travel with her parents for 4 days during Mid-Autumn break. We got picked up by her parents the night before Mid-Autumn day, after watching the first Twilight movie. We drive to her parents' luxury apartment in Yuci (Yuci is halfway between here and Taiyuan) and crash on nice leather couches to watch some English TV. I-Robot is not the same after the Chinese government cuts out all the excessively revolutionary parts! Sharing a bed under a princess-y mosquito net, I dream of what adventures awaite us during tomorrow's festival. The next morning we drove, then parked and walked -- because of the horrible traffic -- to her grandparents' house (maternal?, paternal?), also in Yuci, to celebrate the holiday.

Mid-Autumn day is eerily similar to Thanksgiving. Everyone goes and spends time with their extended family and uses the day to eat amazing amounts of food. What a great holiday! The traditional foods to eat are dumplings (jiao-zi) and mooncakes, though many Chinese dishes (meat, vegetable, noodles, rice...I could go on for awhile) are also eaten. Chinese meals are all family-style: Chinese family-style. American family-style involves large platters of food, serving spoons, and almost equally large plates for the eaters to stack food upon. Chinese family-style involves many small dishes of communal food, no serving utensils (expect in the case of communal soup bowl, which usually has 1 huge ladle), and 1 tiny plate or bowl of rice or noodles for each diner. We're talking smaller than bread plates people. Now this is what I call communal eating.

On a direct flight, each bite is taken from a communal dish to your awaiting mouth, all with your individual chopsticks (kwai-zi). This process is repeated over and over again until you are full or until the dishes start looking rather picked over and maybe even empty. The later is usually the most common way of stopping because normally you eat beyond being full and only stop at food coma. Stopping when you are full is a rather foreign concept here, and is a concept I am trying to relearn...quickly.

One frustrating aspect of the meal was that I could only smile at Lynn's family. Even the slow ball questions were a bit rough. But then I started casually snacking on peanuts, one by one, with my chopsticks.

"You are very good at chopsticks," one of aunts declared in Chinese.
"My son cannot even pick up peanuts with his chopsticks."
"Where did you learn to use those?"
"Meiguo." (America)

Turns out that my linguistic ability did not hold these relatives back from admiring my skills at something. According to Lynn and her family, one's skills with chopsticks are a marker of one's intellectual abilities. I had gone from the confused dunce to the smart, silent type. Wow. I then made sure to use chopsticks at every opportunity in front of them (easy...there are no forks around), smiling with satisfaction, peanut by peanut.

* * *

After the eating and the digesting... Wait. Let's pause to digest digesting, shall we? Digesting is an important part of any Chinese meal. Taking a 1-hour after-lunch nap is acceptable practice here. Mid-Autumn Day, Lynn and I walked our guts off, Lynn's dad slept, and Lynn's mom chatted away with Lynn's aunts and grandmother. We all had our methods for coping with eating beyond our limits. We didn't want to get car sick!

After the family meal, we four popped into the car for a 5-hour car ride to the southern boarder of Shanxi province. Once we arrived, we were able to finish up celebrating Mid-Autumn day by admiring the moon on an evening stroll and watching a Mid-Autumn day singing extravaganza on TV while nibbling on more mooncakes. What a day!

Over the next couple days I lived through a passport fiasco (never forget to bring your passport to a Chinese hotel!), watched my friend Lynn get manhandled for her mooncakes by a macaque monkey at a monkey reserve in the mountains of southern Shanxi province, and listened in a period ensemble play 1 traditional Chinese piece over and over again at Chancellor Chen Tingjing's house from the Qing Dynasty. We came back to Taigu a day early so that we could catch the last day of Pingyao's International Photography Festival. We got there as the many of the pieces were being taken down, but it was still awesome. (In Pingyao, I got to eat two new kinds of noodles: pancake-shaped ones and beehive-shaped ones.) The next day I was back to being a teacher.

* * *

A few days, drama episodes (brought to me from here and abroad [the US is abroad now...cool huh?]), and sleepless nights later, I find myself on vacation again. We are now celebrating National Day, or the founding of the Peoples' Republic of China. And we don't have to make up these days! WOOT! On National Day, the first day of the 10-day vacation, we are supposed to turn on the TV and watch the troops and tanks roll through Tienanmen Square to the sound of fireworks bursting in Beijing and everywhere else, including Taigu, all morning. (I've been told that the fireworks mean that someone is getting married and that people like getting married on holidays. Not sure if the firworks are or aren't more connected to the holiday.) I slept through all this joy and only got my TV working to see the last 5 minutes of the TV special celebrating it, which at this point was showing off the Shanghai Expo. It looks amazing and when I'm in Shanghai during Thanksgiving, I hope to visit it!

Even though I'm the only American left in Taigu for the holiday, I am glad to be here. I hate doing things alone in China -- I always loved doing things alone in the US. There is so much risk and stress around going out without a Chinese speaker (Chinese or American) at my side. However, every time I go out alone, something amazing happens. Yesterday I went out alone for lunch and ordered by myself for the first time. Guess what happened? I got exactly what I wanted to eat! Other walks alone have exposed me to students chanting Crazy English, to guitar players on campus whom I joined and played some Joanna Newsome for and listened to some Metallica played by them, to cornfields and countryside, to the Chinese equivalent of, or the Taigu equivalent of, normal, which sometimes looks really sublime: shiny, fascinating, different, and completely mundane. Beautifully mundane.

Well readers, I hope you too find some beautiful mundaneness.

p.s. I just bought a bike. Freedom!