Putting a smile on lips all around the country

In 2015, stand-up comedian Song Wanbo gave his debut show at a cellar bar in Beijing.

The audience was sparse, about 10 people, and included some of the other performers on the bill.

Song's performance lasted less than five minutes, and his jokes didn't raise as many laughs as he had expected, with only two or three people squeezing out a few polite chuckles.

Nevertheless, after the show, he decided to quit his job with a video game company and devote himself to full-time comedy.

He called it "a bold move", so bold that he didn't tell his previous colleagues, friends or family that he had changed his job.

"If I had been an onlooker, I would have probably advised myself not to do it. It was too reckless," the 32-year-old said.

Song had his first taste of stand-up comedy in 2014, when he went to see a show in Beijing. The comedic style, which originated in Western countries, was still new in China, and Song said he wasn't interested when he watched the show so he didn't take it seriously.

Yet the art form was on the rise in China. After a video of Chinese-American comedian Joe Wang roasting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner went viral in 2011, comedy clubs started springing up across China.

In 2015, the country's first stand-up comedy festival was held in Beijing, attracting the nation's top performers to the event.

The same year, Song started learning more about the genre by watching numerous videos of foreign performers and attending live shows. By that point, he was intrigued.

"I felt I had this talent, too," he said. "Everyone probably feels they have a good sense of humor, so when I saw other people performing, I was not impressed. I thought I could do it as well and even do it better. I wanted to try."

Song loves video games. After graduating from university in 2012 with a degree in Chinese language and literature, he worked for several video game companies, dreaming of writing original scripts.

However, in the early days, companies mainly imported or even copied games from other countries or their peers.

That meant Song always did mundane jobs such as entering data onto spreadsheets, which required minimum creativity.