Laughs with a Chinese twist

A bet with a friend led to a Parisian stand-up comedian deciding to continue his career in Mandarin

Wearing a wig and a denim skirt, French stand-up comedian Patrick Vesselier opened his recent show in Paris by singing the song Je m'appelle Helene, a piece that is emblematic of French pop music to many Chinese.

When the music ended, a background voice said: "One month ago, Patrick did not speak any Chinese. Today, he still doesn't."

The comedian then took a sip of the Chinese spirit Moutai, his magic drink, and suddenly began talking in Mandarin. The audience burst into laughter.

Despite having never been to China and not being able to speak a word of the language, the 41-year-old Lyonnais challenged himself by doing something he has never done in his 12-year career as a comedian: performing in Chinese.

While many of his friends and colleagues had considered it a mission impossible, Vesselier managed to make jokes and play with the words in Chinese for an hour, producing streams of laughter from both his Chinese and French audience members.

He came up with the idea after a conversation with a Chinese friend who complained about not finding any comedy shows in Paris that are adapted to the Chinese sense of humor.

"So I had a bet with my friend that I could do such a show. They thought it was impossible and I was crazy," Vesselier says.

It was not until he started to write his script and have it translated into Chinese that Vesselier began to realize how difficult and demanding the job was.

It took him three months to finish the draft of the story. He then found a Chinese freelance interpreter, Jia Chunjuan, who helped him translate, polish and adapt the French script into Chinese in a way that can be understood and enjoyed by Chinese audiences.

One of the most difficult aspects of the process for Vesselier was the intense memorizing. Because he had no knowledge of Mandarin, he had to memorize the lines word by word phonetically, like memorizing a piece of music.

After practicing eight hours a day for more than a month, he was still afraid of receiving a cold response from the audience. He also worried that any laughs he got would be at his Chinese not his jokes.

To test his show, Vesselier regularly visited Belleville and the 13th district of Paris, where many Chinese immigrants live.

He also read books about Chinese culture and tradition, and watched popular Chinese movies to try to understand the way Chinese communicate and their sense of humor.

A major source of his inspiration came from books by French writer and linguist Veronique Michel, who lived in China for many years and studied the Chinese way of communication, popular social expressions among young people and the creation of new and witty phrases on the Internet.

"In a way, the French and Chinese sense of humor are similar, as we both are very good at wordplay," Michel says.

"I think Patrick did a good job as he managed to merge the French and Chinese sense of humor."

Vesselier's routine was about a Frenchman in his 40s who sees himself as a loser with no money, no job and no woman. He believes his life would be better if he were Chinese.

To prevent a complete flop, the script of the show was projected onto screens in Chinese and French.

Although he had been warned of the sensitive subjects, Vesselier still managed to make jokes about them.

"If Adam and Eve had been Chinese, they would probably have eaten the snake instead of the apple," he says.

In another scene, he spoke about a conversation on political freedom he had with his Chinese friend.

"I told my Chinese friend that in France we have the freedom to talk about and criticize President Hollande. My Chinese friend replied: 'Yeah, sure. In China, we could freely criticize Hollande, too.'"

To keep the audience engaged, the show also featured popular Chinese songs such as My Motherland by well-known singer Guo Lanying and The Moon Represents My Heart by Taiwan's pop singer Teresa Teng.

"I think he made a clever choice of jokes," says Wang Zhihua, who saw the show. "They are fresh but not vulgar, and they did not go to the extreme where he may offend some people."

But not all the Chinese audience members found the show funny; some were disappointed.

"I think it's a matter of debate and taste," says Jia, the show's translator. "Comedy sometimes is very much like opera. Some people can be moved to tears while some remain untouched."

For Vesselier, the biggest thing he learned from the whole process was that all the cliches and stereotypes about China and Chinese people are wrong.

"I found that all I knew about the Chinese people was wrong," he says. "For example, they say the Chinese always work a lot. No. All Chinese eat fried spring rolls. No. And Chinese like to be only with other Chinese. No."

After the performance in Paris, Vesselier says he will take his show to Beijing and Shanghai in July and Las Vegas in November.

He has also decided to learn the Chinese language properly because it will improve his show. He also plans to stay in the country with his family for a while so he can gain first-hand inspiration to create his second show in Chinese.

"My audience members for the future are the Chinese," he says.

lixiang@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 04/25/2014 page28)