Comedians perform stand-up comedy at Xigua, a theatre in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province. Photo: Courtesy of Xigua

Every Saturday night, a small, 80-seat theatre called "Xigua," or "Watermelon," located in Yongqing Fang, century-old alleyways in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, is packed to the rafters.

Three or four stand-up comedians walk on stage, one after another, and delight the audience throughout a 1.5-hour show. This would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

"If you think what the performers say is funny, laugh out loud; but if it sucks, just heckle them with your applause," said a comedian surnamed Ji while warming up the audience at the beginning of a show. Ji had barely finished speaking when the whole room burst into applause, cleverly playing along with the joke.

Difficult start

In the metropolis, which has few stand-up theaters, there are no more than 20 shows a month, including both Putonghua and Cantonese comedians, with ticket prices generally less than 100 yuan ($14.50).

"When we first started out, there was one time when we had only two people in the audience, but 10 comedians backstage," Ji told the audience during a break in the show.

Ticket sales were not enough to support a single performer in a small theater. "So most of us are part-time performers," said Pi Qiu, a comedian and head of a stand-up comedy club named "Douban" in Shenzhen.

Recently, he staged his stand-up routines on the latest season of "ROCK & ROAST," one of the most popular TV talk shows in China. "If I were known to a wider TV audience, maybe there would be more people to watch our live shows," he said.

Li Dan, a famous Chinese stand-up comic and planner of the show, admitted in the program that though he is now well-known to the public through stand-up, this art form is still limited in China.

Stand-up comedy, which originated in Europe and North America, is quite young in China, with "open mic" shows first appearing in pubs in Beijing and Shanghai in 2009. Audiences in Guangdong Province embraced it much earlier as it was first introduced to neighboring Hong Kong in 1990.

Dong Jiama, born in 1990 and deeply influenced by Cantonese stand-up comedy, read an online article about a show in Guangdong in 2014 and discovered that besides entertainers, even ordinary people could perform stand-up. Then, he began to perform onstage and founded a stand-up club called "Banana" with his friends in 2015.

Though their first Guangzhou audiences often posted numbers in single digits, the industry gained more attention after a number of TV shows related to stand-up became popular in China in 2017.

Since then, the number of their audience has steadily grown and now performances can attract 50 audience members on average. Sometimes, they will have people travel from other cities just to catch their shows. Their stages have moved from coffee shops and pubs to a small theatre.

The show must go on

One of the Banana club's founders, Fang Yu, previously worked for a well-known technology company in Shenzhen. His past work experience, workplace relationships and overtime work are all fodder for his jokes.

Such material based on reality has become hugely popular among young people in China. "All of our jokes come from our own lives and resonate with the audience. Only when you come to the club and participate in the interactions, can you feel its true charm," said Liang Xiwei, a comedian at the club.

With more and more Chinese people spending money on live entertainment amid booming development of the culture industry, Dong and his friends are looking for bigger performance venues. To them, bigger audiences mean better performances and less stress. Despite this increasing popularity, Dong and his friends still find time to work on new material and host regular "open mic" nights.

In Dong's eyes, there remains considerable room for improvement in the country's stand-up industry. "To attract bigger audiences, we should localize our stand-up, which came from the West, in its contents, forms and even rhythms," he said.

Originality is very important in stand-up comedy, but the protection of original work is not easy. Comedians must strike a difficult balance between promoting their shows via the internet and risking having their jokes plagiarized.

"We welcome you to post pictures from the show online but no audio-visual recordings please," Ji begged the audience at the beginning of a show at the end of July.

Stand-up caters more to young people, mainly those between the ages of 20 and 35, according to data from Pi Qiu's club.

Despite their struggles, even scattered laughter from audiences is enough to give the performers confidence to keep going. "After all, making people laugh is what it's all about," said Liang.
Newspaper headline: Funny Business