THIS WAS FUNNIER IN CHINA

A Jewish American comedian walks into a Chinese bar…

“Why China?” Well, Appell studied Mandarin in college and went to China on a study-abroad fellowship, where he fell in love with Beijing, “a hot, delicious, absurdist puzzle box of a city.” What’s more, he adds, “Nothing was easy, nothing was boring.” What proved to be particularly difficult, but intriguing, was a Chinese form of comedy called xiangsheng, translated as “crosstalk,” involving a joker and a straight man: “A: In the late Qing dynasty— B: They don’t know when that is! A: Late 1800s! B: Don’t act all cultured and leave them behind. A: I got this! Late 1800s. One of the Qing Emperors goes kaput. B: ‘Kaput?’ Was he a Yiddish emperor? A: Maybe.” It’s not quite Abbott and Costello, but it’s in the neighborhood. What diverges in traditional Chinese comedy, Appell writes, is that it’s perfectly PC to make fun of regional differences—whereas doing political jokes of whatever stripe, as he learns onstage and off, can land you in the gulag, or at least barred from the set. Guiding Appell through this rigorous education is a Master Ding, who “would use his fifty years of comedy insight to blast the smallest mistakes in your performance in front of all the disciples. This sucked, mostly because he was almost always right.” But soon enough, the student becomes something of a master himself, launching a Chinese sketch comedy show, writing for and performing on TV, founding a comedy club, doing cruise ship gigs, and even touring North American and European Chinese-language venues—and all in Chinese, of course. There are adventures and misadventures aplenty, and while there isn’t much in the way of howlingly funny japery here, it’s an interesting way to examine another culture from the point of view of a “performing monkey” from a faraway land.

A modestly entertaining but surely unique travelogue/memoir.