Jokes

I started by telling the class a joke, or trying to, in Chinese. It was an American joke that I had worked with my tutor on translating into Chinese. Jokes are notoriously hard to translate across cultures, and I wasn't sure how this would work. My goal was to get them to tell me a Chinese joke (in English, of course). I wanted to choose a joke that would have some cultural significance, say somthing about American society. So I chose a lawyer joke. The fact that there are all these lawyer jokes in America certainly reveals something about the American attitude towards lawyers. The jokes, of course, are not flattering to lawyers, and usually show them to be, well, quite ruthless. The joke I told them involved a lawyer and his friend who are backpacking in the woods. They come across a bear. The lawyer starts to take off his backpack and the friend says, why are you taking off your pack for, you can't outrun a bear. And the lawyer says, I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you. Thankfully, they laughed and then they got together and told me some Chinese jokes. One or two I honestly didn't get, but I think it had to do with their translation into English, but some of them were quite good, and revealing.

My favorite was one about the Chinese needing to decide how many astronauts to send into space, and after prolonged debate they decide on two, and when asked to explain their decision they say that if they set up four they would play mahjong and if they sent up three they would play dodiju. Mahjong is a very popular board game here and dodiju is a popular card game, and the joke is funny because it is the culture poking fun at one of its nearly addictive attitude towards these games. I still wasn't sure, though, if the astronauts were supposed to be from Chengdu, which might make more sense since Chengdu is known especially for its love of mahjong. There was another interesting joke about a headmaster, a director, a teacher and a student who are on a plane. There are only three parachutes for the four of them. Both the headmaster and the director say that they are too important so they grab the parachutes and jump off. The teacher says that the student is the future of China and so offers the parachute to the student, who says not to worry, there are actually two parachutes left because the headmaster grabbed the student's backpack by mistake. This joke actually is quite touching in the attitude towards the teacher and it is the big shot, the headmaster, who gets it in the end. And there is a lawyer joke. A lawyer and a farmer meet on a narrow bridge. Only one can go across, and the lawyer says "I will not give way to a fool" and confidently walks across the bridge. The farmer says, "I will give way to a fool" and lets the lawyer pass.