A guy went into a public bath and entered female room by mistake, he didn’t realized it untill 3 girls went into the room. By then the room was already filled with steam. The guy think it’s going to be such a big stir if the girls discover him, so he standed in the corner hoping he will get away with the room full of steam. First girl saw something in the corner and cried: “wow! a vending machine!” The girl went forward and started shaking up and down the supposingly “vending machine mechanism”. The guy didn’t want to cause trouble so he threw out his towel, the second girl saw it and was giving it a go as well. As she shakes the “mechanism” left and right, the guy threw out his soap. Then third girl came and was shaking the “mechanism” back and forth. The guy had nothing to give and eventually, the semen landed on her, she was filled with joy: “I’ve got shampoo!”

While sex sells, in most of the times, a large number of chinese jokes involves making fun out of the typical behaviour of a certain group, such as authorities - particulaly the stereotypes of insufficiency of officials (accents, ignorance, corruption), and bezarr student and lecturer’s behaviours in universities, which are often circulated in chinese blog sites.

Moving on, as mentioned before, changing lyrics of songs is very popular in china as a form of humor, typically by altering the orginal lyrics from pop songs, classic children and old propaganda songs into sex (yes, we are dirty minded) and toilet humor (feces, urine, fart, you name it). I’m not sure if western culture has similar behaviour as well, because I’m studying abroad and I’m not aware if anything similar are circulated in younger generations. I think in western culture, if people want to make fun, they would more likely to create a new song, rather than changing the lyrics of existing ones.

As information are being exchanged between different cultures, there are language barriers. Songs in particular, will be completely out of tune if the lyrics being translated into english. The complex culture differences between east and west, makes some message become totally irrelevant after they got across, such as celebrities or some famous figure in history. Therefore, the most stright forward and widely accepected idea of humor is picture, whether motion or still. I guess that’s why you get the idea that chinese humor is based on visual, because your chinese friends want to connect with you in a easier way than trying to explain one particular idea for hours, and you got bored.

One last thing though, I really think the chinese is to blame. Since we were young we were always educated in a way that we should be modest, and “less doing, less mistakes” kind of way. This can be serious barriers when chinese communicating with foreigners, especially westerner. Typical behaviour will be avioding conversations, because some chinese think their english is not good and will make a fool out of themselves, so it’s best not to contact at all. I got annoyed numerious of times when my chinese classmates in UK try to aviod communications with the lecturers during and outside the class as if they have stole something. Second is the lack of understanding of western culture, a white guy is a white guy, no distinction between American, British, French and Spanish etc. The main source for a chinese understanding of foreign cultures is from movies, and as we all know, stories in movies are merely for amusement, which more or less creates myths of foreigners among chinese themselves, IE. all the families in the west lives in nice little suburban neighbourhood. Propably that’s why your chinese friend may think that you will enjoy Mr Bean and silly pictures, because they think that’s what a westerner might like, and naive humor will definitely not cause offend or embarssment while dirty jokes may.

Before I end this boring essay I’d like to add one more thing though: creating still amusing images are more likely had its origin from Japan, than from China itself, but this will be a lot of words, so I leave it from here.