Xiangsheng
Encyclopedia
Xiangsheng sometimes translated as crosstalk, is a traditional Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 comedic
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 performance in the form of a dialogue
Dialogue
Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....

 between two performers, or, much less often, a solo monologue
Monologue
In theatre, a monologue is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their thoughts aloud, though sometimes also to directly address another character or the audience. Monologues are common across the range of dramatic media...

 or, even less frequently, a multi-player talk show. The language, rich in pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...

s and allusion
Allusion
An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...

s, is delivered in a rapid, bantering style. Xiangsheng is one of China's foremost and most popular performing arts
Performing arts
The performing arts are those forms art which differ from the plastic arts insofar as the former uses the artist's own body, face, and presence as a medium, and the latter uses materials such as clay, metal or paint which can be molded or transformed to create some physical art object...

, and is typically performed in the Tianjin dialect
Tianjin dialect
Tianjin dialect is a Mandarin dialect spoken in the urban area of Tianjin, China. It is comprehensible to speakers of other Mandarin dialects, though its greatest deviation from the others lies in its individual tones, and the lack of retroflex consonants...

 (or in Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....

 with a strong Northern Chinese accent).

Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 xiangsheng comedian Dashan
Dashan
Dashan is the Chinese stage name adopted by Canadian Mark Henry Rowswell, CM who works as a freelance performer in People's Republic of China. Relatively unknown in the West, Dashan is the most famous Western personality in China's media industry. He occupies a unique position as a foreign...

 (Mark Rowswell) says the closest equivalent in English would be Abbott and Costello
Abbott and Costello
William "Bud" Abbott and Lou Costello performed together as Abbott and Costello, an American comedy duo whose work on stage, radio, film and television made them the most popular comedy team during the 1940s and 1950s...

's "Who's on First?
Who's on First?
Who's on First? is a vaudeville comedy routine made most famous by Abbott and Costello. In Abbott and Costello's version, the premise of the routine is that Abbott is identifying the players on a baseball team to Costello, but their names and nicknames can be interpreted as non-responsive answers...

" sketch.

Format

Modern xiangsheng is made up of four skills - speaking (說), imitating (學), teasing (逗), and singing (唱).

History

The term "xiangsheng
Chinese comedy
Chinese comedy has a long history that dates back to the Zhou Dynasty when the aristocracy kept jesters in their homes....

" (written 相声 or 相聲) originally referred to the act of imitating someone's speech and actions. It rose as a performing act during the Ming Dynasty
Ming Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...

. From the Qing Dynasty
Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....

 to the 1920s, xiangsheng gradually developed to become a style of comedic monologue. Later xiangsheng came to be performed as a dialogue and sometimes even in groups of three or more.

The earliest xiangsheng comedian known by name is Zhang Sanlu (張三祿), who performed in the mid nineteenth century.

After the widespread use of Mandarin
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....

 from 1949, the popularity of xiangsheng increased throughout the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

. It is a standard feature of CCTV
China Central Television
China Central Television or Chinese Central Television, commonly abbreviated as CCTV, is the major state television broadcaster in mainland China. CCTV has a network of 19 channels broadcasting different programmes and is accessible to more than one billion viewers...

's annual New Year's Gala
CCTV New Year's Gala
The CCTV New Year's Gala is a Chinese New Year special produced by China Central Television. Broadcast on the eve of Chinese New Year on its flagship CCTV-1, satellite channels CCTV-4, CCTV-9, CCTV-E, CCTV-F, and CCTV-HD, the broadcast has a yearly viewership of over 700 million viewers, making it...

 and other popular performing arts shows in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

.

To appeal to younger audiences, animators have created animated versions of various skits using audio from past broadcasts. The animated versions uses humor in a literal sense.

Xiangsheng as social commentary

The small scale and popularity of xiangsheng makes it second only to word of mouth in reflecting popular concerns. Hou Baolin and others have said that xiangsheng items are "works of comic nature which use satire and humour as their principal base. Their satirical content strikes home at contemporary malpractices and also often includes political satire." The role of xiangsheng in social commentary was seen after the fall of the Gang of Four
Gang of Four
The Gang of Four was the name given to a political faction composed of four Chinese Communist Party officials. They came to prominence during the Cultural Revolution and were subsequently charged with a series of treasonous crimes...

 in 1976, when xiangsheng performances provided the first open criticisms of the gang. After 1976, xiangsheng has also provided satire concerning corrupt officials and members of the Communist Party of China
Communist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...

, although criticism of the Party as an entity remains off limits.

Famous xiangsheng actors

  • Hou Baolin
  • Ma Sanli
    Ma Sanli
    Ma Sanli was a China comedian in the traditional Xiangsheng or "crosstalker" style.-Biography:Ma was born in Beijing; he was a Hui, and the son and grandson of practitioners of Xiangsheng. He was apprenticed to Zhou Deshan in 1929....

  • Liu Baorui
  • Ma Ji
    Ma Ji
    Ma Ji , born Ma Shuhuai , was a xiangsheng performer in China. He was one of his generation's most popular and influential xiangsheng performer and was mentor to many later xiangsheng performers.- Biography :...

  • Jiang Kun
    Jiang Kun
    Jiang Kun is a Chinese football player who currently plays for Shanghai Shenhua.-Bayi Football Team:Jiang Kun started his professional football career in 1997 with Bayi Football Team after graduating from their youth team...

  • Hou Yaowen
    Hou Yaowen
    Hou Yaowen , or Hou Yuewen was a Chinese xiangsheng actor.-Biography:...

  • Ding Guang Quan (丁广泉)
  • Dashan
    Dashan
    Dashan is the Chinese stage name adopted by Canadian Mark Henry Rowswell, CM who works as a freelance performer in People's Republic of China. Relatively unknown in the West, Dashan is the most famous Western personality in China's media industry. He occupies a unique position as a foreign...

  • Feng Gong
    Feng Gong
    Feng Gong is a Chinese actor, xiangsheng performer, film director, and screenwriter from Tianjin, China. He is the great grandson of Feng Guozhang, a statesman and warlord of China during the early 20th century.- Partial filmography :...

  • Guo Degang
    Guo Degang
    - Biography :Guo Degang was born in Tianjin. He began to learn pingshu when he was 8 years old.Guo went to Beijing in 1995 and established Deyun She , a xiangsheng performance theater, in 1996...

  • Fong Yigan
  • Zun Shaochin

See also

  • Manzai
    Manzai
    is a traditional style of stand-up comedy in Japanese culture, which usually involves two performers —a straight man and a funny man —trading jokes at great speed...

  • Rakugo
    Rakugo
    is a Japanese verbal entertainment. The lone sits on the stage, called the . Using only a paper fan and a small cloth as props, and without standing up from the seiza sitting position, the rakugo artist depicts a long and complicated comical story...

  • Shuochang
    Shuochang
    Shuochang is a form of traditional Chinese storytelling , with many regional subgenres; it is also often referred to as "narrative." Shuochang performances usually intermix speaking and singing, and are accompanied by percussion instruments and sometimes also plucked or bowed string...

  • Kouji
    Kouji
    Kouji , which can be translated literally as "mouth skill" or "skill of mouth" is a vocal mimicry performance art which utilizes the human speech organs to mimic the sounds of everyday life. When this vocal mimicry is combined with varying degrees of story telling, acting, and singing, it results...

  • Comedians Workshop
  • Performance Workshop

External links

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