“AS COMICS, WE ALL UNDERSTAND THAT WE NEED TO BE WITHIN THE BOUNDARIES OF SOME LINE. THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE LINE IS ALWAYS CHANGING”

shows can’t get too big, or else it might make the government uneasy and they may put restrictions on crowds,” Daniel Dan notes. “But how can you make real money with small crowds?”

Storm Xu claims that the risk of operating Comedy UN is “not worth losing any sleep over.” When crackdowns come, however, they can be sudden and sometimes permanent. Comedy Club China lost its former venue at a café in Beijing’s Wudaokou quarter after an audience member complained about a joke on a social issue. “Our open mic nights are kind of in a gray space. Besides, large gatherings of foreigners attract government attention, especially if they are giving unscripted speeches,” manager Jacobs explains.

Jacobs cites the sudden closure of Shanghai’s Kung Fu Komedy club, shortly before last October’s China International Import Summit, as a cautionary tale. Previously credited with making Shanghai China’s “comedy capital,” the influential club’s shuttering sent shockwaves across the scene, though former coowner Andy Curtain has stated it was “less dramatic than it sounds” when authorities came to the club during a Wednesday open mic night: “They were like, ‘Yeah, you’re not allowed to do this anymore,’” he told the “Lost in America” podcast in March. There were options to re-open, but after consideration, Curtain decided it was like “putting a Band-aid on a sinking ship.”

Live comedy is not the only medium that has had to deal with sudden regulatory reversals: In July 2018, Youku’s localized version of Saturday Night Live was taken down without explanation soon after release (then returned quietly, with a second season announced for this coming June.) Last year, Neihan Duanzi, Bytedance’s popular app for memes and humorous videos, was abruptly shut down for “vulgar content,” much to the disappointment of its 30 million users. One anonymous user lamented: “When Duanzi was censored, I felt a certain pain in my heart, like someone had taken my child from me.”

“Humor doesn’t have to be political to be funny,” Moser comments. “Older comedians who have already developed their craft seldom complain. However, the younger generations, who are trying to create something new, feel [the government influence] much more strongly.”

Tony Chou knows this all too well: In 2017, he was employed by Sohu to perform on the popular late-night internet talk show, the Liang Huan Show. Despite quickly gaining popularity, only nine of the 12 episodes of the season were broadcast; five can still be found on the internet. Reportedly, the show fell on the wrong side of the authorities due to a single joke. “As comics, we all understand that we need to be within the boundaries of some line,” Tony Chou comments. “The problem is that the line is always changing.”

Some comics have dealt with this by self-censoring. The Chinese system often leads the country’s comics to overly rely on self-deprecation, according to Hart. “In China, you can focus your jokes on your own individuality, but not individuality in the context of society.” Many of Hart’s jokes revolve around her American husband, and few Chinese comics develop ideas beyond family drama, dating issues, or job pressures.

That doesn’t mean that Chinese comedy is devoid of diversity: Dan, who claims to have the “selfawareness” to stay away from political topics, often delves into his experiences growing up in a small Hunan village as a member of the Yao ethnic minority. One joke relates to the village custom of putting a 5 kuai bill in a dead person’s open coffin, which led confused outsiders at the funeral to try to “one-up” one other by throwing in larger and larger denominations.

Hart believes that comedy remains empowering, in spite of these challenges. Comparing it to China’s traditional xiangsheng, which is scripted and takes a long time to master, she notes that “stand-up is based on your own story; your own perspective. Everyone can participate because no one is the same. Everyone has a unique voice and perspective that are theirs alone.”

For Dan, this was what drew him to comedy in the first place, after shows like Friends and Shameless helped him deal with depression during university. “When I first went to a comedy open

FEW CHINESE COMICS DEVELOP IDEAS BEYOND FAMILY DRAMA, DATING ISSUES, OR JOB PRESSURES

mic night…it was less about comedy and more like therapy,” Dan recalls. “I hated studying biochemistry and I was in the process of coming out. I remember I started my set with a self-introduction, ‘My name is Daniel Dan. I am gay.’ Then my dad died and I turned to comedy to cope. For a while, I would start my set with, ‘My name is Daniel Dan. My dad just died.’”

The days of independent comics and unique perspectives may be numbered, however, as “comedy start-ups” flood the scene with venture capital. Sensing the advantages to monopolizing young talent, companies like Fun Factory (Xiao Guo Culture Company), Dan Li Ren, and Beijing Talk Show Club are hiring stand-up performers under exclusive contracts, funneling them into affiliated web shows or offline clubs and tours— and in the process, creating a model strikingly similar to the masterapprentice relationships of the past.

Beijing-based Dan Li Ren is funded by Tudou, the Alibababacked streaming site on which their contracted comics perform. In 2017, Shanghai’s Fun Factory purchased the Chinese rights to Comedy Central Roast, a web program in which comedians poke fun at a celebrity, after securing 120 million RMB from China Media Capital and Wang

Sicong, scion of the Wanda Group.

Within a year, Fun Factory’s localized version, Roast, had racked up over 3.6 billion views on streaming platform Tencent Video. “Everyone wanted to do stand-up after that,” Dan explains. “But the TV show producers were from a different era; they didn’t have a clue how to incorporate Western-style comedy into their programs.” As the company’s stable of TV and web shows became increasingly varied, more comics were needed to fill the slots, but China’s underdeveloped stand-up scene proved problematic. “Stand-up was underground and there was only a limited number of truly talented and experienced comedians,” says Dan.

The competition within this small pool was cutthroat—often to the detriment of local comedy scenes. One independent comedian told TWOC anonymously that Shenzhen was one of the hardest-hit scenes, as comics relocated to Shanghai with their Fun Factory contracts. Many are lured by the prospect that, if their offline performances under the company get laughs, they’ll have a direct pipeline to be cast in Fun Factory or its investors’ online programs.

More established comics are concerned by the effect these companies may have on the nascent stand-up scene, noting that the terms of the contract can be exploitative and monthly salaries are low, especially for young talents. The aforementioned anonymous comedian compared the business model unfavorably to that of the shared-bike industry, in the fierce competition to accrue talent and debt just to gain market share. “Their incentive is not to create the best comedy, but to grow their own teams.”

“Creativity is not just about investing money and getting a return; the equation is much more complicated than that,” notes Tony Chou. While he is excited about the new capital flooding into the comedy sphere, he worries that market influences could cause stand-up to follow the “K-pop model”—“putting less emphasis on the individual and

just finding good-looking people to tell jokes that other people write for them.”

In spite of these concerns, Daniel Dan is currently signed to a start-up (which he declined to name), and is grateful to be allowed to make a living from his craft. His day job requires writing and directing Mandarinlanguage sketch comedy for other contracted comics at the company’s clubs in Beijing, leaving his evenings free for his passion—english-language stand-up. “Jokes cannot be written in an office somewhere. The industry requires offline performances for the audience to determine if your ideas and jokes are actually funny,” observes Dan, who explains that he hopes to “explain China to the world” through his comedy.

Tony Chou, though, is still doubtful of the new model’s sustainability, noting that many web shows—the holy grail for comics, as well as investors—last only a couple of seasons. His work with Sohu has opened Chou’s eyes to the unforeseen considerations of profitmaking in programs, which often rely on one major underwriting sponsor because “most platforms assume people won’t pay for content.”

“In the West, there is one major stakeholder—the audience,” reflects Chou, who is set to star in a forthcoming Sohu program modeled after Conan O’brien’s eponymous show. “In the Chinese model, you must worry about the audience, the sponsor, as well as the government. Producing something that all three can agree on is a nearly impossible task.”

Still, Chou remains optimistic, noting that lower-tier cities are developing their own scenes. Independent clubs are popping up in cities like Shenyang, Xi’an, Qingdao, Xiamen, Taiyuan, Shijiazhuang, Chengdu, and Suzhou, though the best local talent still risk getting “poached” by comedy start-ups in Shanghai or Beijing.

“Stand-up comedy is on the rise and we must protect it,” Chou notes with hope. “If we follow the early days of rock-and-roll in China— if we don’t make waves, we will definitely succeed.”

“IN THE CHINESE MODEL, YOU MUST WORRY ABOUT THE AUDIENCE, THE SPONSOR, AS WELL AS THE GOVERNMENT”