Playing the Joker

By Cao Li (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-01 14:40

He quickly rose to fame after playing minor roles in several popular dramas.

In the early 1990s, Zhou met a woman six years older than him and fell in love. The woman's family, however, were strongly against the relationship and Zhou injured his future father-in-law. He was jailed for 200 days and lost his job.

In 1992, Zhou became a financial broker and has since experienced the ups and downs of the business. In 2006 after another business failure, a close friend, Peking opera actor Guan Dongtian, persuaded him to return to the stage.

"Traditional huajixi are now full of cheap jokes because most performers are not well educated," he says.

"But the elites and well-educated need comedy too. And I believe Shanghai is a city of elites."

One day, Guan showed him a tape of stand-up comedy performed by a Hong Kong actor. Zhou told Guan that he could do it better and they decided to do a Shanghai-style stand-up comedy which Zhou dubbed "haipai qingkou".

"As an art form it distills the essence of huajixi," he says.

Writer Yu Qiuyu says that Zhou is a rare talent; while Sanskrit scholar Qian Wenzhong says Zhou turned up at the right time: "He established a new Shanghai comedy form when the traditional huajixi was sinking into oblivion and when there was a growing awareness of the Shanghai identity."

Zhou believes he was born to be on the stage.

"Every time I hear the last call before the show, I can feel my blood boiling like an excited horse about to start a race," he says. "What could be more fun than having 1,300 people laughing with you."

"I think of all the jokes myself," says Zhou, who spends four hours a day reading 14 different newspapers and making notes of funny conversations.

"I replenish my jokes at every show. Also, I have lot of friends who are talented and knowledgeable and who very often enlighten me."

In a recent show, Zhou talks about former South Korea president Roh Moo-hyun and compares the man who committed suicide after a corruption probe to Chen Shui-bian, the former leader of Taiwan province, who is in jail for corruption.

On being asked whether he expects to lose his popularity in a few years, Zhou says that if he was to count all the Shanghai people who want to see his show he will be able to keep performing until he is 70 years old.

"But I will never perform out of Shanghai because my jokes are deeply rooted in local culture," he says.

(China Daily 07/01/2009 page20)

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