The Difficulty of Comedy

As I mentioned in a previous post, as part of my responsibilities at South China Normal University I am teaching English to a class of undergraduate psychology majors. In theory, we meet once a week, though in practice this has never been the case due to rescheduling classes around holidays or my travels. I am supposed to grade the students, but I am given no guidelines on how to structure the class: I can teach whatever I want because just the experience of speaking English with me and listening to me speak English will be beneficial for their spoken English abilities.

This has been fairly stressful, but I've sought help from the students by asking what they want to learn about America and what components of the English language they want to focus on. One thing that came up when asking my students this was humor. Humor is notoriously difficult to translate and hard to understand across cultures and even though my students all watch a lot of American TV (honestly, I'm pretty sure almost all of them watch more hours than I do), they often have trouble understanding the jokes contained in them. For reference, the most popular shows that people watch here are "The Big Bang Theory," "2 Broke Girls," "Friends," and "Vampire Diaries."

So anyway, to help explain humor and help my students get a better sense of American contemporary society, I've decided to tell a joke at the beginning of each class, and then explain it, and, additionally, have them watch episodes of "Modern Family" for homework. The Joke of the Day has resulted in me telling such gems as "What did the fish say when it ran into the wall? Dam(n)!" and explaining the classes of "A ___ walks into a bar," and "Why did the chicken cross the road?" jokes. After some explanation, these are generally met with a few appreciative chuckles and nodding from maybe half the students, of which I am fairly proud.

"Modern Family" is harder. I didn't think about it before I had students watch the first episode, but the lack of laugh-track in "Modern Family" makes it very hard for non-American, non-native English speakers to understand what exactly is supposed to be funny. I had the students watch the first episode for class on Monday and email me with at least two jokes, phrases, references, or words that they didn't understand or that they found particularly amusing. Following are some of the responses that I got:

"What makes me puzzled is that when Haley invites her friend to her home, why Claire is so nervous? Americans have the open mind of the relationship of girls and boys, aren’t they?  And are many children mature in America? Manny is just eleven years old but he looks like an adult when he shows his love to the girl?"

"First, what is cream puffs mean when it be used to describe a person. Second, Why did phil mean touch in this TV show."

"Why does Claire say “if Haley never wakes up on a beach in Florida, half-naked,”? Is the beach in Florida special comparing with others? And Why does Phil say “Lily. Isn’t that gonna be hard for her to say?” when Phil know the baby’s name. " 

So in answering these questions, I got to explain: how "cream puff" can be used as a pejorative for gay men, how Americans like to make fun of foreigners' accents, and what a stereotypical college Spring Break is. The second was particularly funny because almost all of my students pronounced Phil and feel the same, just like Gloria's Columbian accent in the show. The part about "Lily, isn't that gonna be hard for her to say?" actually was a little lengthy to explain, because it required explaining: A. That Americans stereotypically lump all Asians together and stereotype them, and B. That the stereotypical Asian English accent can't correctly pronounce "l", and therefore C. The joke is that Phil is assuming that the Vietnamese baby, who is not speaking, will still have an "Asian" accent when she grows up.

In addition to these questions, I also got two categories of students who had trouble coming up with responses for the homework. Either they didn't find the material funny at all and so weren't sure when there were any jokes or they watched several seasons of the show and so couldn't remember things from the first episode or alternatively sent me questions about a random episode from a later season. I was not prepared for either of these possibilities.

And now I am off to bed, for tomorrow I am off to Thailand. The Luce Scholars have a mid-year meeting in Thailand, where we will catch up, meet with the leaders of the program (the wonderful Li Ling and David Kim), and discuss how our placement has been so far. We will also enjoy being in Thailand and wander around Bangkok and lounge on the beautiful beaches of Krabi. It's a rough life.

Return from Shanghai

I have returned from Shanghai!
To do so, I flew on Spring Airlines (春秋航空), which is essentially China's equivalent of Ryan Air. Therefore, it was the cheapest flight I could find, but not the best experience. Our flight was delayed two hours, most of it while we were sitting on the plane, seats were not particularly comfortable, and nothing free was provided on flight. I flew back on the last day of the National Week Holiday, so things were crowded and tickets were more expensive as everyone headed back to work.

The most bizarre part of the flight was towards the very end, when the soothing announcer voice asked us, in English and Chinese, "Tired? Why not wake up with some gentle exercises?" Then, the flight attendants, standing at intervals throughout the aisle, led the passengers through a series of simple sitting exercises. These included rotating the neck, stretching and making circles with the arm, etc. I did not participate, enjoying my normal in-flight ritual of half-napping, but I was shocked by the number of passengers who did. At least half of them were following along with flight attendant, and it was almost enough to pull me in and follow the crowd. I don't remember if Ryan Air does something similar, but it was definitely unexpected.

Shanghai was a great city, beautiful weather at this point of the year and absolutely no pollution. I spent the entire three days I was there walking around and exploring the city, seeing the architecture in various parts of town. It feels very different from Beijing and Guangzhou, is much more modern and more Western, and therefore has a much larger number of foreigners than either city (or so it seemed to me).

There were many very cool buildings, from the ultra-modern under-construction Shanghai Tower, known as the White Magnolia Building:

to the classic Chinese architecture seen in the Shanghai Confucian temple (文庙):

to the older-feeling European-style mixed living found in Sinan Mansions (思南公馆) near Xintiandi (新天地), conveniently close to the great Boxing Cat Brewery:

But one of my favorite buildings that we stumbled across was just a simple appliance store, with a life-affirming slogan pasted across its front:

  

YOLO, random Shanghai appliance store. YOLO.

Internet!

I now have internet in the apartment! However, I'm too lazy to take pictures of it all right now, so the introduction will have to wait until the next post.

With my recent purchases of a plunger, a blanket for my bed (which was supplied with a bottom sheet but no pillow or top sheet), peanut butter, and a Chinese cook book, I now feel pretty successfully moved in. Additionally, last night I broke in my kitchen by starting my first batch of sauerkraut (in a jar purchased from IKEA -- the only place in Guangzhou where I could find measuring spoons) and ginger ale, so this apartment is starting to feel a little more homey.

Tomorrow is the first day of another holiday in China, National Week, in remembrance of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and lasts for one week, though two of those days need to be made up on neighboring weekends. This was an awful lot of holidays in a row right at the beginning of the semester, but after this I believe there are no more holidays until the Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, at the end of January. So I will have an uninterrupted period of work for several months.

For this holiday, I will spend the first couple days exploring Guangzhou with some friends from Oberlin who are teaching English in Shanxi province this year, and then I'm off to Shanghai to meet up with Ben, the Luce Scholar placed there, and one of our friends from Beijing. And then the first day of work after the vacation will be the welcome feast for the beginning of the year, where all the students and professors get together and have a large banquet. It serves a double function this year, because it will also be a welcome feast for one of Prof. Wang's coworkers from Germany and one of his students, who will be spending the next several months working at South China Normal University. This will, for a time, remove my status as the only foreigner at the School of Psychology. I think I'll be able to cope.