China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Laughing matters
Urumqi comedy show reaches 15 million followers online
Few people call Memettursun Memeteli by his given name. To millions across China, he is better known as Daodao, the zany lead character in an online comedy show. Daodao’s exploits in Anar Pishti (The Pomegranates have Ripened) are rooted in life in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
“Viewers in Xinjiang can relate to our sketches, while those from other parts of the country watch because they are intrigued about our remote region,” said Henizat Tohti, the show’s producer.
Xinjiang locals are immensely proud of the delicious pomegranates grown in their region. Like the fruit, Anar Pishti was cultivated in the northwestern region, with the seeds of the show taking root during a discussion among two friends.
Since the first episode was released in 2016, the show has gained a cult following and has more than 15 million fans across various platforms.
The show’s success was made possible, in part, by the rapid development of the internet in China. More than 753 million Chinese access the internet on mobile devices, and short videos have become an important format for expression. There is even a term for the online celebrities spawned from this phenomenon — wanghong.
The wanghong industry is huge. It was worth more in 2016 than China’s box office in 2015, according to CBN Data, a commercial data company affiliated with e-commerce company Alibaba.
Livestreaming is the preferred format for many wanghong, but the market is becoming so saturated that many stars have been accused of releasing “sensational” videos that favor style over content in an attempt to stand out.
The Anar Pishti team said they did not want “fame for fame’s sake”, and rather than a livestreaming format, they decided on a scripted and edited show. They wanted their show to stand out for what people learned from it, and what better way to learn than through laughter.
Memeteli grew up in a tiny village. He said his world was small until internet cafes began to open up around the time he was a student. Rather than news or current affairs, however, he found he naturally gravitated toward funny videos.
“These videos showed me that the world was full of people with the same sense of humor as me. They reveled in making people laugh,” he said. “I instantly knew this was my calling — I wanted to make people happy online.”
For a spell, Memeteli worked for a TV shopping channel. It was there that he met Hezreteli Yasin. The two friends bonded over a love of sitcoms and lamented that Xinjiang was poorly represented in that niche. It was Yasin who suggested they fill the void.
And so, the character Daodao, a young Uygur from Xinjiang, was born.
Daodao is a shortened version of bishi daodao, the Uygur phrase for powerful man. In the show, he is a country bumpkin, a hapless sheep herder, who can call his flock by name but struggles to remember what his wife is called. He clamors to speak out for his friend but is less forthcoming when he is faced with a group of brawny men.
“It’s the contrast between his name and his personality, and the plot reversal that makes people laugh,” Yasin said.
Yasin is a natural at scripting comedy, while Memeteli was born to act. This, added to their ability to identify relatable trends and memes, means the duo are the linchpin of the production team.
In Counting Sheep, the 30-second sketch that catapulted Anar Pishti to fame in August 2016, Daodao struggles to get his flock to react to him. At his wits end, he calls them by their social media handles: The sheep are instantly more responsive to their online personas.
The success of the sketch motivated the team to release the show in weekly installments. They recently commenced their fifth season, and now release episodes daily.
The show does not have an outlandish budget, and the crew must wear many hats. Aside from acting, Memeteli helps Yasin — who directs — with the script and editing. Unarhan Seitqazy is the show’s gaffer and sound recordist, and when she is not acting alongside Memeteli, Zubeydam Hasan must source all the costumes.
“Anar Pishti was not created by just one person, just as a pomegranate is not made of a single seed,” Memeteli said.
The show is multilingual, with Mandarin, Uygur, Kazakh and other languages spoken interchangeably.
“That’s how we talk in Xinjiang. It’s a multiethnic region, and we borrow terms from all our different languages,” Memeteli said. “Language is not a problem. Neither is ethnicity.”
In fact, the region’s ethnic diversity is often a source of inspiration.
In one musical sketch, Daodao plays a street food vendor whose girlfriend leaves him for a rich man who, she says, can afford steak and spaghetti. Beside himself, Daodao turns to song: “I was your kebab, and you were my noodles. We used to such a perfect match. What happened to us?”
In the first few seconds of another episode, Superman and Spider-Man look set to go head-to-head in battle. When the camera pans out, however, the fight turns out to be a naanbread baking contest.
Viewers from across the country have praised Anar Pishti for the way it challenges stereotypes.
“I thought Xinjiang was just meadows and horses. I didn’t know that the region was actually quite modern or that it had high-rise buildings and cities, too,” one netizen said.
Yasin said it was the desire to educate people about his hometown that keeps the comedy group going. “Life in Xinjiang is not all about cows and sheep, or singing and dancing. Many people outside Xinjiang know little about life here,” he said.