A funny way to fortune

Comedy has a huge market in China. Yet platforms for it have shifted, which has been disorienting for both artists and fans. Crosstalk or xiangsheng, a two-person standup routine, peaked in the 1980s. Its biggest personalities maintain their hold on public imagination only through television variety shows, especially big galas like the CCTV one for Lunar New Year's Eve. Comedy clubs have never caught on even though Guo Degang had a hugely profitable business that served as a training ground for up-and-comers.

Sketch comedy is also part of the TV variety show. It rarely develops into sitcoms, which is a new thing and heavily influenced by American shows like Friends and Big Bang Theory.

However, sketch shows, which have popped up online in recent years, are much shorter and raunchier than the TV versions and with a sensibility closely tuned to the young demographic.

Dapeng, a host-turned-entertainer at Sohu, is behind two such Internet-only shows. They are more fully developed than Jiang's video skits and feature better production values. But they generally adopt a male perspective in their satire.

Dapeng parlayed his online fame into a blockbuster movie, The Pancake Man, last summer, entering the higher-profile and more lucrative arena of film comedy. Most of China's domestic films are either comedy or have a strong dose of comedy.

For example, all three major releases for this year's Lunar New Year holiday－Mermaid, The Monkey King 2 and From Vegas to Macau 3－were designed to elicit waves of laughter. While China's comedy films are not sophisticated, their enviable return on investment has drawn a phalanx of money men and talent.

It seems to be much more difficult to create a television series with comedy as the main selling point. In the 20-plus years since the sitcom was introduced to China, only a few have stood out. And it's definitely not for the lack of trying because sitcoms require very little in production cost.

Finding the writing talent who can churn out an assembly line of jokes and gags sounds much easier than it actually is. Part of the reason is the culture of sharing jokes, even among professionals, without giving credit or compensation. The best jokes are often passed from cellphone to cellphone, with no attention to copyrights or loyalties. Even cash-earning shows would simply lift material without a hint of guilt.