Shanghai comedian Zhou Libo, 42, started out as a farce actor. Photos: IC

By Wang Weilan in Shanghai

Scalpers were touting tickets at double or triple face value in the bitter winter cold outside West Nanjing Road metro station exit, barely two bustling blocks from the Majestic Theatre.

Across from the theater stands the fragrant Westgate Mall, where the city's notorious fashionistas love to fondle the latest stylish commodities. Standing outside the mall's hefty doors, peddlers held up wads of cash offering to buy any spare tickets for tonight's show.

At 7:30 pm sharp, Zhou Libo's silhouette was projected onto the white canvas at center stage. As the ‘sun' rose up the canvas, the image metamorphosed into that of a national leader, glorious rays beaming in all directions about the canvas. The audience burst into loud laughter.

Finally, the spotlight landed on the night's star. Zhou Libo, 42, has hair parted slightly on the left and gelled down with heavy mousse. He sported a 50,000 yuan white Giorgio Armani suit.

One of Zhou's suits was custom-tailored in Europe, according to his agent Zhou Yi.

Once a farce actor, Zhou's one-man standup in Shanghai dialect is a smash hit in Shanghai.

Zhou recently joked he had refused to participate in the famous Spring Festival Gala TV show alongside popular Beijing comedian Guo Degang.

"I was about to agree, when I thought about you," he told the audience. "I won't go to Beijing and leave the stage here empty.

"I believe the Shanghai people can look after me."

Zhou Libo's Humorous Dictionary explains Shanghai dialect by giving funny examples. Photos: IC

His famous remark about how could a coffee drinker like himself perform on the same stage as a garlic eater like Guo triggered heated debate about whether Shanghai culture was superior.

Only you

Promising on stage he would remain forever a small dish for Shanghainese, Zhou said he would only ever perform for Shanghai people.

Zhou has never performed his skits outside Shanghai. But he has plans to perform overseas in the next two years, for overseas Shanghai people.

"For people outside Shanghai in China who really like Zhou Libo, please fly to Shanghai and contribute to its GDP growth by consuming in the city," he joked on stage.

Performing solely in Shanghai was also sound business strategy, Zhou admitted.

"I'm also a businessman, I know where my market is. It's enough if I can hold this city," Zhou told the Southern People Weekly.

Tickets are reportedly sold out until February 2010. By then, he will have performed 122 shows since his comeback to the stage at the end of 2006.

Six sculptures of Zhou's face with differing trademark expressions tower over both sides of the stage. Meanwhile, his performance is broadcast from two giant screens for the sellout audience of 1,300.

Zhou performed for more than two hours, triggering a steady stream of laughter. A musician, Shen Hao, a graduate of Shanghai Conservatory of Music, played ditties on the electronic organ to back up his gags.

The show has totted up almost 700 explosions of laughter in total, according to his agent's calculation.

The topics in his Crazy for Money show range from the stock market to house prices, from hot global news to more philosophical questions such as ‘what is happiness?'.

Fast facts: Zhou Libo
Born April 22, 1967
Birthplace: Shanghai
1981 Joined Shanghai Farce Troupe at 14, studying under Shanghai farce master Zhou Bochun
1990 Imprisoned for maiming
2006 Comeback on stage, performing Shanghainese language stand-up comedy
2008 Talking about 30 years stage show
May 2009 Talking about Shanghai stage show
Nov 2009 Crazy for Money stage show

The show is performed in Shanghainese, with a smattering of Mandarin. Zhou has claimed one of his jobs is to help maintain Shanghai dialect and culture.

Mandarin's takeover of Shanghai has been hailed as a sign of diminishing discrimination towards outsiders and increased opening towards the rest of China, but many Shanghainese fret about the loss of their culture.

Unconditional love

One of Zhou's sketches concerns a gangster attempting to conduct a robbery after seven years' imprisonment. The robber finds out to his disappointment that when he shouts "Stick 'em up!" in Shanghai dialect, no one understands and the depressed thief is forced to resort to Madarin.

"To foreigners, Shanghai is China. To Chinese, Shanghai is a foreign country," Zhou said on Crazy for Money.

Zhou once said in his Talking about Big Shanghai show that "Shanghai culture is something to be admired and envied."

Born to a Shanghai family of Zhejiang origin, Zhou has confessed to being a Shanghai chauvinist.

"I love my mother unconditionally," he said. "It does not mean Mother has no shortcomings. That's how I love Shanghai."

In Crazy for Money, Zhou painted colorful portraits of Shanghai characters, mirroring their daily troubles and strife. Their love of money, the unaffordability of apartments and their legendary stinginess were all carefully delineated, but more for comedic than critical effect.

Zhou mostly praised the goodness of "our Shanghai".

"I believe my shows have enhanced the image of Shanghai and Shanghai men," he told the Global Times.

Zhou also threw in some humorous sprinklings of northern Jiangsu Province dialect.

"I see little discrimination in it," said Jiangsu Province-born Shanghainese Zhang Yong.

"The idioms Zhou used in northern Jiangsu dialect reflect the common wisdom of average people struggling for a better life."

Political news is a favorite topic. Zhou has even skirted the supremely sensitive taboo of including Chinese state leaders in his skits. He imitated Premier Wen Jiabao in his show Talking about 30 Years, and noted how Wen always arrived in disaster areas to shake the dirtiest hands saying, "We got here late!"

Zhou told the Global Times there was no censorship at all of his show before the performance and that he felt no pressure trying out risqué jokes.

"I don't do political jokes," he told Southern People Weekly.

"I have an interest in news not politics. I am reinterpreting news through jokes, not satirizing, which is aggressive in nature.

"My topics are endless as news happens forever."

Zhou subscribes to and skims 14 newspapers a day including the Chinese version of the Global Times. The most interesting stories in the famously patriotic paper were about "American imperialism", Zhou said.

Ultimate

Making fun was not his ultimate goal, Zhou said, claiming this is the crucial difference between his show and other comedians.

"I won't humiliate myself and clown about on stage like some comedians," Zhou told Beijing-based Youth Weekend. "I have my views on stage and I interpret harsh facts and ideas in a happy way."

He feels best when people say his words rekindle a collective memory of the city, perhaps a rethink of contemporary life values.

Loyal as he is to his hometown, Zhou does not refuse outside opportunities. He will conduct a symphony orchestra in Beijing in January and join film stars in Zhejiang for a role in the film the Flirting Scholar, Zhou told the Global Times. He is also preparing a vocal concert in Shanghai.

Zhou's own life story is no less stirring than his performance. Recruited by Shanghai Farce Troupe at 14, Zhou was imprisoned for 205 days at 23 for blinding the father of Zhang Jie, the woman with whom he was in love. After he was released, Zhou married Zhang, but they divorced years later. Zhou went into business and went broke. He remarried his ex-wife in Japan and came back to China in 2003. With the help of friends including his now-art director Guan Dongtian, a Peking Opera actor living in Shanghai, Zhou returned to the stage in 2006. It had been 16 years.

With everything apparently back on track, Zhou divorced Zhang again. On her Sohu blog, Zhang revealed many of their private stories and even uploaded a 10-minute video claiming Zhou had been taking drugs.

Zhou would not comment on his private life to any media except to say he is now single and in the process of getting divorced.

"I understand life is uncertain and those I most admire are those who take things easy," he said.

"When on the sea, sail. On land, settle. I could start again from scratch in any city."