English stand-up finds its legs in Guangzhou, driving ticket sales

English-language stand-up comedy, long confined to a handful of venues in Beijing and Shanghai, is taking hold in Guangzhou in Guangdong province, driven by a growing base of bilingual audiences and a new generation of performers writing in their second language.

The shift is most visible at JokeUp Comedy Club, which opened on April 18, 2024, as the city's first dedicated English-language comedy club, which has run open mics several times a week and staged featured showcases across Guangzhou, with occasional performances in other cities in Guangdong.

Its emergence reflects a broader trend. Stand-up comedy has grown rapidly in China over the past several years, moving from the back rooms of a handful of bars to one of the country's most talked-about cultural forms. Streaming shows such as Rock & Roast and The King of Stand-up Comedy have turned once-obscure performers into household names, filling arenas and driving ticket sales at the small clubs where those performers first cut their teeth.

A younger generation of Chinese audiences has embraced stand-up as a way to talk about work, family, gender, and the pressures of modern life, often more directly than mainstream entertainment allows. Comedians who can articulate what an ordinary weeknight feels like — the commute, the group chats, the phone calls from parents — have found audiences well beyond their home cities.

Almost all of that boom, however, has played out in Mandarin. Running alongside it is a quieter, parallel story: the rise of English-language stand-up in China.

English stand-up is a smaller scene by any measure. There is no streaming show driving it, no household-name headliner. But, in cities with sizeable international populations, English open mics have quietly become a regular part of the weekly calendar. The rooms tend to be mixed by design: Chinese comedians who write and perform in English, expatriates who have made the city home, students, visiting professionals, and tourists who happened to walk past a chalkboard sign outside a bar.

The mix produces a specific kind of comedy. A joke about renting an apartment in Guangzhou lands differently when it is told by an African trader to a room of Chinese office workers and European exchange students. A bit about family expectations plays one way from a comedian who grew up in Guangdong and another from one who grew up in Ohio. Neither version is complete without the other, and the laughter in an English comedy room in China is often the sound of two or three cultures recognizing each other in the same punch line.

Despite being one of the most internationally connected cities on the Chinese mainland, Guangzhou has been slower than its northern counterparts to develop the scene. Chinese-language open mics have been running in the city for years. English-language comedy, for a long time, was something residents traveled to Shanghai or Hong Kong to see.

JokeUp was founded by a comedian who performs under the name Root Anyway. The club started with a single room, a microphone, and a handful of people willing to try. Its tagline, "A stage for every voice," is a working principle rather than a slogan.

Two years on, the club has, fittingly, taken root. In October 2025, it staged what it billed as Guangzhou's first all-female English stand-up showcase, headlined by comedian Christine Po, the show ran for two consecutive weekends. Touring comedians from other Chinese cities and abroad — among them Nitinn R Miranni and Jordan — have closed out specials in front of full houses.

The more telling nights, regulars say, are the ordinary ones. On a typical open mic, the line-up moves from a first-timer holding notes on a phone to a working comedian trying out a bit written that afternoon. The audience is whoever came in for a drink. Entry is free, in the model most English open mics in China follow; the ask is that people order something at the bar.

For the comedians who come up through rooms like these, the appeal is partly practical. English stand-up in China is not a career for most of the people who do it. It is a place to write, to fail in front of strangers, and to find out whether an idea is actually funny or just funny in one's own head. It is also, unmistakably, a place to meet people. Between sets, the room feels less like a club than a meet-up.

Chen Bao also contributed to this story.