Rock & Roast is a talk show /stand-up comedy competition organized by Tencent Penguin Pictures, a subsidiary of Tencent Video, and Shanghai Xiaoguo Culture and Media Co. It started in 2017. This year is its fifth season. It is livestreamed by Tencent Video. Last year, the forth season got 2.6 biollion views. All videos are also available on Youtube, without English subtitle.
The form is entirely copied from stand-up comedy in the USA. Its Chinese name is Tuokouxiu conference. Tuokouxiu is Chinese phonetic translation of “talk show”.
Tuokouxiu was not very popular in China. In 2017, Xiaoguo started two online programs in cooperation with Tencent video: ‘Rock & Roast’ and ‘Roast’. They promoted the concept of tuokouxius, and attracted more audience (and advertisement income).
Rock & Roast is open to the public, everyone can apply to compete. The host Li Dan famously said “Everyone can do 5 minutes Tuokouxiu.”
But of course Xiaoguo will review the draft of each applicant and choose around 90 candidates that will go to the show. Xiaoguo itself also trains stand-up comedians, and their own trainees are a big part of the competition. Some of them are full time stand-up comedians, some are part time. There is be several rounds of performances, initially 3 or 4 Lingxiaoyuan (invited guests who “guide” the audience on the funniness of the stand-up performance) vote on each performance. Once it’s getting closer to the final rounds, the audience can join in the vote to choose their favourite comedians.
People who won the final competition normally get famous. They are invited for more shows. Stand-up comedians often travel between cities to perform in theatres. Winning the competition get them name recognition and they can sell more tickets. Business also like to pay the now famous comedians to do ads for them. Tuokouxiu has quickly become popular among young people in the cities. In our newsletter 20, we talked about “ordinary but over-confident man”, which came from Miss Yang Li in the third season of Rock & Roast. Yang was trained by Xiaoguo. People who are not trained as stand-up comedians also compete in Rock & Roast. Many of them are internet celebrities or livestream hosts. Another young woman, Li Xueqin (whom we mentioned quickly in newsletter 87) also made her fame in the third season. She is now active on many TV programs.
I have listened to hours of the Rock & Roast, I am impressed by the creativity of the artists. I think these jokes best reflect the life of ordinary people in China, because the comedians got their inspiration by observing life around them. So it is a good digression from our normal topics. Hope you will get some good laughs from it.
Below are some from this season’s shows, it is currently in very early stage:
A month before the Shanghai lockdown, I rented a huge flat, 72 square meters. Now think of it, it might be the most worthwhile flat I have rented. I lied in it everyday without leaving it. It is so worth it.
My flat is not just big, it is also brand new. The moment I moved in, I invited my friends who are very poor to come for a party. I took them to visit around …. pay attention to the words “around”. In my previous flat, you rolled your eyes and you saw all of my flat. It was so small, the bed, the desk, the chair and the dresser, fully occupied the space. It is like a tangram. Once, I changed a little of the layout, I could not get in any more.
I felt very humiliated. So now when people ask me why I rent such a big flat, I will tell them, it is to get back my dignity that I lost when I lived in that tiny flat. I have two bedrooms, one is for me, the other is for my dignity.
After looking around, one of my friends said: “No! The flat is newly renovated, it has formaldehyde. My nose feels sour after being here for a while.” I said to myself, is it formaldehyde that makes you sour?
But the next day, I start to feel the sourness in my nose. I searched on the internet how to get rid of formaldehyde. I bought some green plants and an activated carbon filter. I also invited a group of friends with big lungs. First I make them exercise in the room and then I showed them my brand new dresser. After a while, they asked me: “Do you have formaldehyde here?” I reassured them: “Don’t worry, it is almost gone.”
But you don’t know, it is actually very tiring to live in such a big flat. I have a large balcony, which I find very suitable to release sadness. To make sure that my rent is not wasted, I will make sure that I feel sad everyday. One time, after a long time trying, I finally felt sad. I was very glad. I rushed to the balcony. But there are 8 meters from the bedroom to the balcony. The flat is so big, I could not reach the balcony in time! My sadness was released on the way to the balcony.
I feel that these years people are not doing very well. Everyone is studying downgrading consumption. But our generation does not have the ability to save. The more we want to save, the more we spend. All of you who have ever seen a Livestream must know, everything there is really cheap, but everything there is totally not needed.
I bought a bunch of items: a hook that can hang a kid, a cushion that can cool your ass, a cat scratching pole with running machine. We don’t even have a cat, so our dog is playing on the cat pole.
When I calm down, I get angry. I ask myself why I bought the hook that can hang a kid? So when my friend came to visit me, I can say: “Yo, your kid is here. There, hang him up on the wall.”
When I get the invoice, I become more angry. When I play games, my phone will start the addiction-prevention system. Why they don’t have one when I am addicted to shopping? It does not have to be complicated. Just ask me a few questions when I am ready to submit the order:
“How much is your mortgage?”
“How much is your salary?”
“How much is your mortgage minus salary?”
“Now do you still want this glass of taro ice?”
I bought my slippers on PDD, 3.90 yuan and it is anti-slippery. When it is so cheap, you will not think about the price-value-ratio. You are just curious. How could they make them? Will they send me a pair of left slippers? Then you say to yourself: how hard it is to wear a pair of slippers? I got the answer: the anti-slippery is achieved by having a few holes at the bottom, so they form suction when my feet step inside, and they stick to my feet. It is indeed very anti-slippery.
The seller told me, with these slippers, you will never worry about falling in the bathroom. One day, I fell, the slippers were still on my feet. I could walk on the tiled wall of the bathroom. Of course, I did not dare to climb up there. There was a kid hanging there.
These jokes are about poverty in China. Talk show performers normally make very little money, so they have first hand experience of how it feels to be poor.
I was in Shanghai and have stayed in for two months. Now I really look forward to social activities. Staying in alone is very hard. Before that, I knew nothing about cooking. People asks me: as a kid, have you never role-played the kitchen game? Of course, I played those games. But because I don’t like talking and hardly move myself, I was always playing Dad.
My mom often advised me: you have to learn cooking. But one does not have sense of accomplishment in cooking. Because no matter how well you cook, your work will not be preserved. My mom said that a few years ago, some dumplings from a thousand years ago was discovered. I said, have you thought about it ? If they were delicious, they would not become leftover!
Everyday, I cook for two hours, eat in ten minutes, wash for one hour. Who can imagine that the most difficult time is the ten minutes?
In literature, kitchen is the place that represents mediocre and worldliness. But we misunderstood. Kitchen is a dangerous place. There are knives, fire and boiling oil pots. Do you know where else you can find such things? Hell. This is how I feel about kitchen. Do you know the word people use to describe going to the kitchen and going to hell? “Go down (下)”. So when people ask me if I go to the kitchen, I say I go to hell.
Some friends tried to comfort me: since you can not cook, you can filter those men who are not suitable. I said, right, I filter those who need to eat.
The education ministry just published a set of new requirements on craft education. Starting from this September, pupils in primary school level 6 need to be able to cook 3 dishes. How to say this? I want to have kids.
Niaoniao, like many women stand up comedians, talks about gender stereotype in her jokes. In this gig, she talked about how bad she is at cooking and made it sound cool.
I am a deliveryman in Shanghai. I look old because I work under the sun everyday. My work is like opening a blind box, you never know what you are going to deliver. I am most afraid of delivering cakes. Especially the big ones. One hand drives the scooter, the other holds the cake. I felt that I was carrying a bomb. It is very easy to damage the cake. If it is damaged, we have to pay for it. Every year, I have to eat dozens birthday cakes, cakes that wish me success in the college entrance exam, happy 60th birthday. One time it wishes me to marry Jackson Yee.
I don’t understand, nowadays people order cakes for their pet’s birthday. One time I damaged one. They said it was for their dog, and they made me bring it back. I took it back, but I did not want to eat it. I thought dogs are lazy, they do nothing, and they bite people, so I gave the cake to my boss. My boss ate it and was quite happy. He praised me for knowing how to treat him.
Everyday I meet different kinds of people. I also met many security guards. I am very scared of the security guards, because they are very nasty to us. Some call us the delivery guy, some call us the legs. I think those are okay. One time, I get into a community on my scooter, the security guard pointed at me, and called: “Scooter, scooter, get out. You are not allowed in.” I was very confused. I said myself, he might be calling me, but he said “Scooter”. He used the tool I am using to refer to me, it was very infuriating. But of course this is his job, I have to cooperate. So I said, “Okay, walkie-talkie.”
This is one of the controversial performances where some people on Weibo accused the Lingxiaoyuan being out of touch and not appreciating the jokes from ordinary working people.
Hello everyone. Can you tell? I have bad eye sight, 0.02. Do you have some idea? (No, the audience replied.) It is blindness. Let me tell you, anything under 0.05 is considered blind.
It is not convenient for me to go out. I often bump into things. Have you paid attention to blind walkway? Do you notice that the walkway goes on and on and then disappears. Some times it turns. I thought, how could you make it this way? Is it made by blind people?
The safest walkway for the blind people is actually the bike lane, it is everywhere. But the problem is that automobiles often park there. So cars park on the bike lanes and bikes park on the pedestrian lane, and pedestrians, they have to use the road for the autos. No wonder people say that the most dangerous place is also the safest place. I have a bold idea, I want to get a driving license.
I applied to get a guide dog, but I gave up very fast. Because there are very few guide dogs. Do you know how many blind people are there in China? Eight millions. Two hundred guide dogs. Every year there are fifty thousand people waiting in line. I was thinking how far is the dog for me in the future?!
The law says that guide dogs can go into public space, but they are often stopped. They are worried that the dogs will bite people. These people are very ignorant. To become a guide dong, four generations of the dog ancestors can not have any aggressive behaviour. It also has requirement on the breeds. Corgis are no good: their legs are too short. They can’t climb up the stairs. I have to carry it. They can not be too smart. Border collies are too smart: it not only can understand you, it also can understand the way of the world. You told him: no more walk, let’s take a break. It will think are you testing me? Let’s go go go go. Red light is not a big deal, I can catch flying discs.
Nangua is not the first comedian who has some physical disability. The Rock & Roast compeition gave them a chance to let people see them in a fun way. They showed the general public and that they can make fun of their situations and themselves.
in 1979, to help with the official visit to the USA of Deng Xiaoping, we needed to make news-propaganda movies, to introduce USA to China, because at that time, we were too isolated for too long. It was very hard to make theses movies.
First, you could not continue to curse the USA. Our leader is going for an official visit. But secondly, you still could not say that USA is good. After all, USA is imperialism and capitalism. So we must find out their problems. It was made by the China Central TV station. Well, they found the problems: they were not stable. Their workers would go on a strike. So they made a movie. The effect of the movie was very shocking.
What is the movie about? It is about the strike. They followed a black worker. He worked on the assembly line. When he finished his work, he went to the parking lot and drove a car. The Chinese were shocked: the workers have cars! The capitalism is strange. He drove to a supermarket. Chinese people said: “Wow, there is no sales people in the shop!” Then he used his credit card. “What, Americans don’t need to pay when they shop!” Then he drove to his house. Before we knew that house in the USA were not worth much, as it is much cheaper than houses in Shanghai and Beijing. “What! Every American has a resort house.” Totally shocked.
In small town in the USA, people didn’t lock their doors. So they saw the worker with his arms full of food, used his foot to kick open the door. “What, in the USA, you don’t need to lock your door when you go out!” Inside, the worker opened a metal door, put the food in. This was a refrigerator, and no one has ever seen one. Then he fetched a can, opened it and drank it. Chinese wondered what it was.
Then the worker thought of a thing, he went to his car, got a flag out and put it on the car. It says: “From today on, I am on strike.” With Chinese caption.
The Chinese were fainting: why on earth are you on strike?!
That last bit is not from the current season of Rock and Roast.
It is an old joke, I don’t know if it is real, I just thought it is a bit funny.
We will be back to our normal stories next week.
So many things to tell.
