The Chinese Sense of HumorBy C.T. Hsia

At this iunctl.re of history, Cninese-speatcing populatbns are fractured indifferent localities of the world and liting under diverse social and political systems.However, observers still see a common caltural heitage among them-an essential"Chinese-ness" of which, they say, the sense of humor is an important element.This has been evid.ent whether you find yourself in Peking, Taipei or Hong Kong, oron the road to Singapore.

A.t;-"-e 4^.:For a'discussion of Chinese humor, we present hrr",Lii Qi,"*not abidged form,

an essay written by hof. Hsia for a manual on China compiled in 1953 but hithertfunpublished. We are delighted with this "find", not only because the piece was'not widely read in its original form but also in the belief that what hof. Hsia hadto say obout this facet of the Chinese character a quarter ofä century ago remainsabundantly true today.

Huuon Is oNE of the commodities which have been bandied around by writers onthe Chinese character. Some of them have endeavored, quite in vain it seems, toproduce specious evidence of a particular brand of Chinese humor. Insofar as humoldenotes a particular way of sizing up and relishing a character, situation or event,Chinese humor is different from American or British humor only to the extent tha;;certain characters and situations, which are subjected to a humorous interpretatiolin China, are not so subjected in Britain or the United States. Either the British antrAmericans seldom meet with these characters and situations or they regard thesr'characters and situations in a different lieht. And with due allowance for differenlsocial usages and customs, the characters and situations which humor feeds uponare more universal than some sociologists seem to believe.

To begin with, we need to be reminded that laughter is often a form ol'malicious self-assertion. In pre-historic times laughter was a sign of victoryphysiologically it accompanied and aided in the relaxation of the nerves and musclesafter a tense struggle or fight. In time laughter became associated with the externaisigrrs of injury in others-a broken nose, a black eye, or a maimed leg. The injureclparty with his telltale signs of humiliation was a potential enemy of no particulardanger. This is ridicule; and it is still the typical form of laughter indulged in by

30

Chinese Humor

children of all nations. With the transference of the field of combat from thephysical to the intellectual, wit emerged. It is characteristicof any formof wit that

it presupposes an opponent and an audience. The riddle, historically the oldest formof wit, is primarily a contest of cognitive skills.

Another form of laughter has as its imaginary enemy not the inferior object ofridicule but the powerful repressive forces of society. By ridiculilg these forces oforder and decency, one can let off steam and help preserve his mental health. Thus,while half of the American jokes consist in ridicule at the expense of the inferior,the other half are directed against the clergy, the bureaucracy, and the taboosregulating the behavior of the sexes. It is a tribute to puritanism that jokes aboutsex and human anatomy are so hugely enjoyed in this country.

Humor is the most civilized form of laughter because it treats its object ofridicule with affection. When a chüd tries to walk and stumbles, the smiling responsefrom its mother is a sign sf humel-ridicule tempered with love. The humorist,therefore, finds constant amusement in the weaknesses and peccadilloes of hisfriends and himself. Insofar as this is ridicule, the humorist holds himself superior,though he entertains other aims than demolishing the enemy. The professionalhumorist engages the audience's interest by chatting about himself, often in de-

liberately fictional terms, and about his equally fictitious friends whom the publichas learned to love.

THIS CLASSIFICATIoN of laughter can be used to gauge the degree of humane re-finement in Chinese laughter. The Chinese are a noisy people supremely giftedwith the sense of the ridiculous; from this, many writers have drawn the conclusionthat the Chinese are an eminently humorous nation. This statement, however, canonly be accepted if one adulterates the content of humor to include any form ofchildish laughter. Clearly it takes education to adopt the humorous attitude-to begenerous and to free oneself, for however short a duration, from the combativeinstincts which impose seriousness and inhibit laughter. At the same time, to be

humorous is to be condescending. The number of Chinese who can adopt theattitude of generous condescension cannot be large. Thus while the educatedChinese in their intercourse with Westerners often strike the latter with theirabundance of humor, the Chinese masses, with little humane education, are at bestmerely potential humorists because their laughter has not advanced into the stage

of humor. Their laughter often echoes that of the caveman who has just finishedthrashing his opponent. This can be observed in the daily social life of the Chineseand in the type of jokes and stories which they enjoy.

Despite the fact that the Chinese have been very scrupulous in the exercise of/i or propriety, they have lacked instruction in the essence of courtesy, that is, a

respect for privacy and idiosyncrasy. The Chinese still retain a childish delight intaking notice of any physical and moral deviation from the norm; their fellowcreatures, so unfortunate as to be physically deformed and disabled, are usuallyobjects of ridicule. Thus the blind, the deaf, the hunchback, the bald, and the pock-

faced are laughed at openly. This sense of ridicule is also directed against persons

who claim to possess special knowledge or power or who live an abnormal existence:the doctor, the teacher, the magistrate, the monk. The Chinese simply cannot

31

JZ RENDITIONS Spring 1978

believe that a monk can really abstain from sexual love or from eating the flesh ofanimals. Hence'the numerous jokes about the amorous and meat-loving monk. In asense laughter is a social corrective in that it unconsciously follows the Confucianmean in checking both excessive zeal and lax morals. It also upholds the properconduct for each person in his station so that the cuckold or henpecked husbandis always subjected to ridicule because he forfeits sympathy by his lack ofauthority over his wife.

But the Chinese often go beyond the limits of corrective laughter to forms ofextreme childishness. Thus any person whose dialect and dress deviate from thosearound him is an object of open curiosity. For many decades, the Westerner withhis prominent nose and hairy body was stared at by the Chinese villagers. It iscustomary for the city dwellers to laugh at new arrivals from the country, simplybecause the city dwellers, through no merit of their own, have leamed to turn onand off the switches, and to get used to modern ways of living. In a city of sufficientself-importance like Shanghai, any deviatidn from the norm is a call for ridicule.Many comics earn a fiving there solely by their ability to imitate and burlesque thedialects of Soochow, Wusih, Ningpo, Nanking, and Shantung.

This childish and often malicious inquisitiveness goes at times so far as to pre-clude any possibility of humor and to cause extreme discomfort to the victinr.English public schools have been notorious for their bullies. But in Chinese schools,almost every schoolboy is at one time or another the object of unwelcome attentiorr.A student wearing a new gown to school will invariably receive impertinent jeering;thus some girls who have trunkfuls of new dresses at home would resolutely refuseto wear anything but blue cotton garments in order to avoid unwelcome publicity.Rarely does a person having a new haircut escape being reminded of the fact orbeing patted on the head by his fellow students. A student seen with a date in a

theater on Saturday will be an objectof animatedinterpst: he will oftenbe requiredto conciliate his tormentors by treating them to candies or ice cream. If his datehappens to be his classmate, the furor created will reach even bigger proportions.Many sensitive girls, therefore, refuse to have dates in high school simply becausethey want to avoid this public exposure and the embarrassing consequences.

This public inhibition of the individual'd right to do what he pleases is reallythe reverse of humor, which implies a more detached and tolerant view of otherpeople's activities. Thus one may say of the average Chinese that he retains the un-conscious malice of the child. Like the child, when his laughter is not purelvnegativs-1he ridicule or disapproval of other people's physiogrromy, intelligence,or behavior-hs fakss delight in any demonstration of cleverness, in the form o[mechanical ingenuity, verbal wit, or in a well-manipulated situation in which oneperson outsmarts another. Any Westem gadget, properly exploited, finds a readymarket in large Chinese cities, whatever its utility. Much of the ancient Chinest:writing which passes for humor usually consists of records of clever sayings ancistratagems, which give the weak an edge over the strong. The earliest "humorists"whose lives are included in the Records of the Historian were court jesters who byfarfetched analogies steered their masters out of the path of folly. Because of theTaoist distrust of brute force, the Chinese came to admire clevörness; many of thecomic folk heroes are not unlike Eulenspiegel in their resourcefulness in cheating tht:

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Chinese Humor

stupid and putting one oYer on the smart. In popular fiction the beloved heroes are

always infinitely resourceful in military and diplomatic stratagems. The way Chu-koLiang obtains arrows from his enernies by launching into the river, during a foggynight, boats manned by straw men drawing the fire of enemy archers, is not exactlyhumor, but a kind of cleverness that is exhilarating to the Chiaese mind. The readershares with Chu-ko Liang a sense of triumph which is akin to laughter. Likewise, theChinese heroes in adventure fiction are not merely men of prowess whom ordinarymortals could hope to imitate. An American boy tries to become a baseball playeror cowboy hero; a chiaese boy, or for that matter, a chinese aduh, by reading aboutbeings defying every law of mortal probability, turns away from combativeness to a

region of comic fantasy and pastoral justice. The most resourcefi:I of Chinese heroes,the Monkey n The Journey to the llest,is in this sense a supreme comic creation.

THE LAUGHTER oF the Chinese mulsses is often childish and primitive; this is oneof the reasons for ascribing to the Chinese race its perpetual youth. But moreimportant than the lack of humane education in the inhibition of the Chinese senseof humor is the serious business of living in an overpopulated land. This is especiallytrue since the impact of commercial and industrial civilization has thrown the peopleoff their balance, and the old division of labor no longer obtains. Most people, evenafter high school, are not specifically qualified for any job; hence their only chanceof securing a position is through exploitation of their relatives. Humor no longerrules where there is tension of any kind existing between a group of people. The aridkind of ceremoniousness with which a person in an inferior position defers to hissuperior, the kind of supercilious arrogance with which the latter treats the former,and the kind of external courtesy and covert distrust and jealousy among persons ofsimilar rank aspiring for promotion are humor-eclipsing phenomena in a countrywhere there is not a rice-bowl for everybody. This observation holds more or lesstrue of every country, but this kind of tension is particularly noticeable in a city likeshanghai where the struggle for survival claims all one's waking faculties.

All this serious business of living, however, constitutes a source of '1rn-conscious" humor to a good-tempered onlooker, foreign or chinese. Life in aChinese city where the new and old ways make for incongruous contests is a sourceof infinite fun; modern and medieval vehicles crawl at the same pace during theperpetual traffic jam, and people are alternately on guard and out of temper, usingboth the most polite and the most vile of language=ln that sense China is a rich landqiflTgl_!9f_pecause the people Laveadopl-gj-L4e turrnoro"s;ttitüaä bür fätherbeca-use they can 6-ö6ieets of humorous contemplaiion. During the thirties, whenLil Vutilt i"-"äprräsiiäd"liuraor'-iii china, the nation suddenly became humor-conscious. Writers found no difficulty in caricaturing and ridiculing the too obviousnational weaknesses and vices as embodied in typical characters like the warlord,the government official, the C-onfucian gentl,qman, the pot-bellied merchant, the self-important retumed student, the petty clerk, the conscientious Leftist writer, and thecountry bumpkin. Most of the writers, however, stopped at the sketch or essay anddid not creatE,a sustained. huglorous.vision.of modem Chines-9- U,fe,. The early humor-ous novels of Lao Sh€ and Chang T'ien-yi, read today, often seem merely facetiousand the element of contempt is too palpable behind the mechanical manipulation

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RENDITIoNS SPring 197834

of simple humors. It is a pity that republican china did not produce a Dickens, ftrr

I ;;ö';;-;;|i. novelist could have a richer field for observation than in ttie

\o*oru-u of modern Chinese life.t'-'-wi; *.-ctirr"', humorists, then? Anyone who is sufficiently enlightened to

see the hollowness of form and jargon, the absurdity of popular superstition, tlte

incongruity of fact and pretension. By education and temperament, the scholar is

equipped io fiu that role, provided, of course' he is not too much concerned with

personal gain or advancement. Lin Yutang inclines to think that all warlords and'i*porturri

officials in China are humorists: this obsewation is subject to criticisn

to the extent that humor must be disinterested. The chinese warlords and officiais

are not disinterested: their pious compliance with hollow forms, along with their

ieuay prof"ssion of noble sentiments, is not so much a product of humor as a

camouflage to hide their more seedy dealings for power and wealth. Their thorough

cynical ,."tit* is such that their humor is merely incidental'

.T-tretr-ad'itio..nalChincsehumoristswe.rgusuallyretiredofficialsandscholar:sunsuccessful in the civil sersice examinations. Their attitude of detachment and their

independent incomes helped them to enjoy the luxury of humor. A person con-

cerned with pressing p.obiems such as hunger finds it hard to see the ludicrous in his

surroundings. The p*t T'"o Yüan-ming, who was one of china's subtlest humorists'

said upon resigning a petty post that he "would not bend his back for five bushels

of ,i.""; in fact he had already a nice little farm and could thus afford to take

things philosophically. Evidence of literary humor in china was sporadic until the

Ming dynasty when ihe scholars, disgusted with the type of writing required for the

civil service examinations, turned to the familiar essay. The intimate relationship

between literary genre and creative expression is such that, until the discovery of the

informal style, genial self-expressio, ** difficult to achieve in china' Folk humoi:,

however, was excellently taken care of by the novel and drama, jokes, and

anecdotes.TheChinesescholar-humoristisinvariably'a-T491g!,..hedonist.Hehasnoneof

Dickens,s extroverted interest in other people, uüt tatei paini to describe the minor

pleasures and disappointments in his own life. He is often a humorist merely in the

sense that he takes a philosophical, tolerant attitude toward the world's follies'

superstitions, and ambitions. He conceives happiness in terms of seclusion and is

primarily interested in nature and in direct sensuous pleasures such as listening tc

the wind among the bamboo leaves or sipping a good cup of tea prepared with water

from a pellucid spring. He acts on the Taoist conviction that the complex human

relationships are a tig tottrer and that enjoyment of life comes only by stripping

life to its bare essentials. His exploration of reality does not, however, take hin

to the realm of moral scruples and decisions, which challenges the greater writers'

Because humor enjoys a high place in social intercourse, its modern promoterc

often claim for it an analogous importance in literature. with few exceptions' hov''-

ever, the professional humorist is always a minor writer. He proceeds on the ar

sumption that man is a lovable creature and concocts a literary formula which

flatters the reader's sense of superiority. His world is as mentally snug as the world

of women,s magazines with its cute babies, cozy living rooms' and gleaming

refrigerators. It ; ;ilptomatiq o-f lhe,moder*-age- tJrat, whereas satAe has long

t.:t' Chinese Humor 35\

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en:oy94*9*9!assical literary sta-tus. tLe-31]1--of humor was a comparatively recent

.ptenom"non. Satire is akin to the tragic view of life in seeing the bestial qualitiesin

.ri mrnieed chastisement and correction. Jonson, Moliäre, Pope, and Swift all

took a serious view of mankind and would not tolerate the smugness of the Newyorker, Punch, and their modern Chinese parallels. One explanation for the belated

development of literary humor in China was the.9onfucian emphasis on satire and

didacticilqr._The comic portions in the Chinese novels are always satirical rather than

humorous'

TO A oereCHED OBSERVER then, China is a land of rich unconscious humor.

The average Chinese enjoys various forms of ridicule and laughter which do not have

the digpity or charity of humor. Conscious Chinese humor fecds-upqArdio§ynCiasy,-

_Jomp, and hypocrisy. In situations where questions of honor and pride are involved,

/ th. Chin"se often have recourse to partially humorous solutions such as face-saving --! nd Ah Q'ism. Much has been written about different types of national humor; upon

-*a closer examination, however, they can be adequately accounted for by different

social conventions and usages. This is readily proved by the fact that slapstickcomedies manufactured in Hollywood have a ready market in every nation in thewodd whereas sophisticated comedies whose appreciation requires a fullerknowledge of American manners are not so welcome. Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd,and Laurel and Hardy were once household names in China because their anticsspeak a universal language and exploit the fundamental risible situation of a small

man caught in a situation too big for him. Humor also benefits from culturalcontact. The influence of American humor and slapstick comedies is perceptible inChinese magazines and movie-making today.

Though humor is universal, the observation that certain nations have moresense of humor and others have less is still a true one. This is not so much a matterof inherent racial disposition as of congglgg-s guidance of, character developrnent by

re,spo_n5ihle educators- and'.'politiciaas." Modern physio-psychology classifies manaccording to three types: viscerotonic, somatotonic and cerebrotonic. In roughtranslation into lay language, they stand for the "belly" type, the "muscles" type,the "brains" type. The "belly" type, extroyert and convivial, is the promoter ofgenial laughter; the "brains" type, while less inclined to conviviality, is not incapableof wit or humor. It is the muscular person who is the potential enemy of societybecause his chief interest in life consists in the exercise of power over his fellowmen. He is physiologically devoid of humor because he is incapable of admittingpersonal weakness or inferiority. In the traditional Chinese social order the ag-gressive tendencies of the muscular type were held under check and the types heldup for imitation have always been the Confucian scholar, the Confucian gentleman-squire, the Buddhist or Taoist recluse. Pre-war Germany, on the other hand, was Irelatively humorless. For nearly a hundred years it had been exploiting the aggressive , i

tendencies of the muscular person and promoting a philosophy which sanctioned ihis behavior in the supposed interests of the nation or race. The German people ofthe middle ages had a different philosophy and were quite a *.rry people.

The emergence of the muscular person into a position of dominance, too, ha§.been a distinctive feature of modern China. In the face of increasing national

j6 RENDITIONS SPring 1978

-HENRY W. WELLS

From Traditional Chinese Humor:

A StudY in Art and Literature,

Indiana UniversitY Press, 1971.

humiliations, the traditional ideal of the confucian scholar and gentleman has been

discredited and in tris place the national savior has been substituted as the hero' Now

held up for admiration are the characteristics of the muscular person which at first

glance appeal so un-Chinese: efficiency, militarism, and pliancy to discipiine. The

half-baked intellectuals, students, and politicians all find as the first requisite to

national reconstruction-the transformation of the chinese character along the [nes

;i";äffi-i;; **t"rity. They are ashamed of the age-long inefficienq', laziness', -comrption, *o irrrrionriut" t r..or of the scholar, which withers ideaüvn and kills

initiative.But the habit of humor cannot be easily outgrown. The chinese on the main'

land find momentary relief in exchanging witty remarks and cynical observationsat

theexpenseofthedead-seriousCommunistcadres.Theweaponofhumorisfarfromimmediatelylethal,butatleastitprovokesachuckleorsmileandforamoment enables the victim of tyranny tä view the communist activrties in the

nature of a terrible farce'

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A Sinsular Gift

The world over, it has been conceded that life is in general serious, even

if not eamest. Even in Asia the laughing philosophers constitute a minority.

Naturally, only a minor proportion of chinese art and literature reveals a sense

of .o-.iy. Nevertheless, li may reasonably be held that no part of China's

legacy to civilization is more unusual or precious than its singular gift of humor.

,1,. "lt

p.rsons acquainted with Chinese statuary are well aware' the Chinese'

unlike most peoples, actually created for themselves a god of humor and of

laughter.