Talking across cultures

Ding Guangquan (seated on the left) gives advice to Canadian Nick Angiers (standing on the left) and Ukrainian Yegor Shyshov at a cross-talk class in Beijing. Belle Taylor / China Daily

Foreigners are discovering Chinese humor by studying the ancient comedic tradition of cross-talk. Belle Taylor reports.

A classroom is bursting with activity in an otherwise deserted university building on the edge of Beijing's Third Ring Road on a Saturday afternoon.

Xiao Yingcheng - an older, impeccably dressed man with slicked-back hair - leads the class in a song.

The students stumble over the words at first. But after a while they start to sing in loud, clear voices. The song is a traditional folk tune from northeastern China, celebrating Chinese Lunar New Year.

This is Beijing's xiangsheng class for foreigners.

Known as cross-talk in English, xiangsheng is a Chinese folk art with about 200 years of history. It involves two performers who banter back-and-forth, telling stories with riddles, jokes, songs and puns. The classic routines of Laurel and Hardy or the Two Ronnies are the closest equivalent in the English-language world.

Taught by the legendary cross-talk actor and teacher Ding Guangquan, whose first foreign student was Canadian Mark Rowswell - better known in China as Dashan - the Saturday afternoon class attracts the most dedicated foreign students studying Chinese, who are fascinated by the culture, and a few aspiring performers.

Canadian Nick Angiers could fit into any of those categories.

Angiers' day job is as a translator between English and Chinese.

But cross-talk is his passion.

"It's really funny. So it's really fun to study and it's good for our language," Angiers says.

Ding picks Angiers and another student, Ukrainian Yegor Shyshov, to perform in front of the class. They walk to the front, bow to start their performance and are immediately stopped by the teacher, who lectures them on the correct way to take the stage.