Call it comedy with Shanghainese characteristics.

Stand-up comedian Zhou Libo, with his slicked-back hair and bad boy demeanor, doesn’t hold back when he’s on stage.

He has lampooned celebrities, Chinese leaders and local politicians alike. He has pounced on the rivalry between his hometown Shanghai and northern provinces. He’s even imitated Premier Wen Jiabao dealing with the famous Cambridge University shoe-throwing incident.

Delivering his act in Shanghai dialect, Zhou – who drew sell-out crowds to his live shows at Shanghai’s Majestic Theatre earlier this year – does it all on his own, without anyone else in the spotlight.

“Performing solo brings me more space for my imagination,” Zhou says.

It’s a far cry from traditional Chinese comedy acts in the past. Xiangsheng, literally meaning ‘face and voice’, but usually referred to in English simply as ‘crosstalk’, has long been seen as the only equivalent to Western stand-up comedy.

“Performing solo brings me more space for my imagination.”

But the two styles couldn’t be more different. Stretching back to the Qing Dynasty, xiangsheng normally has at least two performers engaging in a rapid fire dialogue routine, premised on a joke involving some kind of misunderstanding.

“Crosstalk is comparable to classic American movie dialogue skits, like Abbot and Costello’s ‘Who’s on First?’ routine,” says David Moser, an academic director at CET Beijing Chinese Studies specialising in Chinese media and culture. “It’s basically a staged dialogue with a straight man and a funny man, and all kinds of illogic ensues.”

Today, Chinese comedians are taking laughter to a new level. With crosstalk dying a slow death, its popularity waning, solo comedic stars are filling the void and taking their turn in the humorous spotlight. Scrapping scripted routines from the country’s comedic past, more up-and-coming Chinese comedians are braving the stage independently, moving in new directions that have many in China in hysterics. 

Where it used to be commonplace in teahouses, theatres, television variety shows and the radio, Moser says the number of xiangsheng performances has dwindled noticeably over the years. Part of the reason for its fall in popularity, is that its repertoire of dialogues, rehearsed over and over by different actors, have become less relevant.

“The thing about xiangsheng is that it draws on standard, traditional pieces. It can’t make fun of politicians, talk about sex or talk freely about certain things,” Moser says.

Chinese stand-up has long been a memorised, somewhat stiff and staged, affair. Compared to Western-style stand-up comedy, routines are rarely spontaneous, personal or topical, making it difficult for audiences to really feel engaged and chuckle at xiangsheng’s punch lines.

 “Xiangsheng is a traditional Chinese folk art form, but it seems it has passed its peak era,” says 42 year old Zhou Libo.

Described in the Shanghai Daily as “the talk of the town, as trendy as LV bags and haute couture, with many of his catchphrases seeping into street lingo”, Zhou has risen from obscure comedian status to being called a savior of local Shanghai culture in the last two years.

He grabs giggles from jokes he comes up with on his own, usually derived from reading 14 newspapers every day. Talking about Shanghai and current affairs in his humourous point of view, Zhou’s shows are more in tune with Western stand-up comedy. It’s propped up by his personality, and telling jokes entirely in Shanghainese has added to his touch.

 “Art without regional culture is colourless,” Zhou tells TALK. “To me, Shanghai dialect speaks for Jiangnan (south of the Yangtze) culture.”

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But Zhou isn’t alone in being a popular regional act. Xiao Shenyang and Guo Degang are also well-known funny men in China who have injected personality in their humour. Though neither is doing stand-up comedy like Zhou, Xiao has risen to fame with his silly personality in northeastern Chinese comic skits, while even Guo – a famous xiangsheng actor from Tianjin – has established a following for the earthy and realistic feel he’s brought to dialogues.

“Guo Degang has found a way to make xiangsheng a bit more edgy and biting,” says Moser, who is also an occasional crosstalk performer. “The way he delivers something ordinary, with a look on his face that makes it seem like he’s thinking another way, he’s making it a bit real again.”

And on the other side of the world, another PRC-born comedian is also having his moment to shine this year. Not a typical American stand-up comic by any means, Joe Wong (Huang Xi), originally from Jilin province, has attracted attention after his hilarious and earnestly-delivered stand-up performance on The Late Show with David Letterman.

“You want comedy to be something where everyone is laughing and engaged.”

He is a rarity. A biochemist whose native language is not English, Wong took on a cultural art form vastly different from what he grew up with in China.

“As a Chinese guy in America, I always feel like my English is not the best, so I’m fighting an uphill battle in terms of competition as a stand-up comedian,” Wong tells us over the phone from his home in Boston. “But this is something I really enjoy, so I just kept doing it.”

Though he grew up listening to, and loving, xiangsheng radio broadcasts during its heydays in China, Wong says American-style comedy is his ideal form of humour.

He is a comic who commands an audience sincerely with self-deprecating jokes, who will walk on stage and greet people with a simple, “Hi everybody … So, uh, I’m Irish.” Wong sparsely sprinkles in material poking fun at his Chinese heritage, but mostly draws roars of laughter from his knack for playing with the illogical and nonsensical.

“You want comedy to be something where everyone is laughing and engaged,” says Wong, who also performed on Ellen DeGeneres’ Ellen’s Bigger, Longer & Wider Show in June. “You should get an immediate sense of the individual; a journey through the performer’s mind, and how he sees the world and understands things.”

And though they’re like night and day, that’s not too different from how Zhou Libo has become so side-splittingly successful.

After all, his basis for making people laugh, Zhou says, is this: “What you know but didn’t imagine; imagined but didn’t say; said but didn’t dare to do.”