Stand-up comedy in China has supposedly recovered. No one explains what knocked it down in the first place; nobody says it out loud, and nobody dares.
Recovery has not made the field feel different. If anything, it feels much the same: what was off-limits before is still off-limits, and things comics could once say are now things many avoid because they fear the consequences. So what is left to say? The question hangs there. No one answers, and no one dares.
Comedian Zhang Haozhe had his account suspended again after remarks that went too far. The wording was crude, but it pointed at something real.
Many people would like to say what he said. They just cannot. The environment for stand-up in this country has long stopped overlapping with the international scene. Comics cannot ridicule group behavior, mock unreasonable rules, observe social phenomena, touch topics around particular communities, or call out the stupidity of mainstream opinion. What remains is self-deprecation and stories that begin “a while ago.” Those are the rules. To survive, a comic takes money with one hand and, with the other, hands over a piece of themselves they have cut out.
When creation turns into flattery—whether of the rules or of the audience—it becomes merchandise, not a work.
Art, though, has two sides. Skill is the ability; the other side is the ability to sell that skill under the current rules of the game. Skill without sales is just self-indulgence. Selling well without skill is a con, but the con is making a living. Neither path is wrong in itself; it depends on what kind of survival you choose.
I once thought about trying stand-up myself. Then I looked at the acts that sell and at what I would want to say. I am not as quick with words as they are. They are better at surviving than I am. I am more willing to speak bluntly. They are better at surviving. I watch closely. They are better at surviving.
Today’s stand-up only needs to get a laugh. Why ask it to make anyone think? Thinking in the wrong direction is a worry; thinking too much is a worry; thinking too clearly is the biggest worry of all.
In the end, they need to live carefully more than we do.
- The word for “work” here also means living, surviving—and, in comedy, the business of setting up and landing a punchline.