Chinese

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報 Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

Volume 10 Issue 1 Vol. 10.1 十卷一期 (Summer 2010) Article 6

7-1-2010

Ambivalent laughter : comic sketches in CCTV's "Spring festival Ambivalent laughter : comic sketches in CCTV's "Spring festival

eve gala" = 曖昧的笑聲 : 中央電視台春節聯歡晚會的小品 eve gala" = 曖昧的笑聲 : 中央電視台春節聯歡晚會的小品

Jin LIU Georgia Institute of Technology

Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.ln.edu.hk/jmlc

Recommended Citation Recommended Citation Liu, J. (2010). Ambivalent laughter: Comic sketches in CCTV's "Spring festival eve gala" = 曖昧的笑聲 : 中 央電視台春節聯歡晚會的小品. Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese, 10(1), 103-121.

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Centre for Humanities Research 人文學科研究中心 at Digital Commons @ Lingnan University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報 by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Lingnan University.

102

subtitled “Lighting Fires, Ritual Space, Maladaw” 升火，祭場，馬啦道. In his explanation of the meaning of the subtitle Adaw states: “[…] we mainly wish to express—Let us gather together in the spirit of living, dancing, interaction, creation and passing things on.” […] 主要

表達——讓我們聚在一起生活，歌舞，交流，學習，創造及傳承的精神。54 He then goes on to exploit the deliberate double entendres in the subtitle: “Lighting fires (shenghuo 升 火)—because [fire] is the source of all ‘life’ (shenghuo 生活) and creation. Ritual space (jichang 祭場)—Shaman means to dance (巫者舞也). ‘Ritual’ means ‘Theatre’ (juchang 劇場) […] The meaning of ‘Lighting Fires, Ritual Space’ is ‘Theatre of Life’ 生活劇場.”55 Adaw’s ceremonial theatre is thus a theatre of the rituals of life. It is his manner of returning to his roots, his center, and of constructing a distinctive voice sourced from his cultural heritage.

In conclusion, as with other ceremonial theatres and “people’s theatres,” the essential goal of Adaw Palaf’s Moguda’ai Theatre experiment is to express cultural and political resistance to the incursions of a dominant culture, whether in that culture be in the form of the nation state, or of transnational consumerism. Building especially on his experience with (Ab)Original Dancers, he has found ways of embedding cultural resistance within the traditional performance styles of his home village. On stage, The Great Flood must resemble ceremonial theatre as developed in other parts of the world, especially in North America by Hanay Geiogamah and his American Indian Theatre Ensemble. However, in contrast to the experiments of Geiogamah, which are directed towards a broad, pan-indigenous audience, Adaw has opted for a highly local and tribe- specific theatre. He is well aware that the imperiled situation of his village is similar to that of all remaining Indigenous villages in Taiwan, but he feels that the way forward can only be found by first reconnecting with the grassroots cultural life of his own village. Thus, while Amis people exist on the periphery of Han Chinese society in Taiwan, Adaw has identified a cultural and emotional center in the traditions of Amis village life. By fashioning a ceremonial theatre from the ritual forms of the Amis people, he invites these people to reach out to “hold Ina’s hand” so as to find the grounding and centering that will allow them to reach with their other hands to grasp the rapidly changing conditions of the twenty-first century world that swirls around them.※

54 Adaw, “Di’er jie yuanzhumin ‘chengren xiju biaoyan yishu yanxi ying.”

55 Ibid.

Ambivalent Laughter: Comic Sketches in CCTV’s “Spring Festival Eve Gala” 曖昧的笑聲：中央電視台春節聯歡晚會的小品

Jin LIU 劉津

School of Modern Languages, Georgia Institute of Technology 佐治亞理工大學現代語言學院

104 105

In the years since Zhongyang dianshitai chunjie lianhuan wanhui 中央電視台春節聯歡

晚會 (The China Central Television’s Spring Festival Eve Gala Performance) began in 1983, it has gradually evolved as part of China’s ritual celebration of its biggest folk festival, the Spring Festival (Lunar New Year). As a significant cultural event, annually organized and produced by the state media CCTV, the Gala is often seen as a valuable opportunity for the Party or the state to convey central, state-sanctioned, official ideology to the populace. Signaling the official, mainstream discourse, the national language, Putonghua Mandarin 普通話 (common speech Mandarin), is predominantly employed in the Gala performance. Xiaopin 小品 (comic sketches), the best-received popular show in the Gala, evokes laughter among the largest national audience.1 Approximately since the early 1990s, xiaopin has evolved from a training exercise in urban academic drama schools to a dialogue-based comic genre infused with the spirit of folk culture— minjian wenhua 民間文化 in Chinese.2 Correspondingly, the xiaopin performers, drawn largely from the “lower,” local, rural folk art troupes, tend to speak various local dialects 方言 (fangyan) or Putonghua with distinct accents. Zhao Benshan 趙本山, the acclaimed king of the comic sketch, often played a comic role in Errenzhuan 二人轉, a regional performing arts form of duet in Northeast China. His sketches, rendered in Northeast Mandarin, are deeply rooted in the traditional peasant Errenzhuan art that he and his scriptwriters have grown up with. By examining the laughter evoked by the language-based comic sketches in the Gala, with a focus on Zhao Benshan and Errenzhuan, this essay explores the dynamic dialogue between the central, official discourse from above, represented by Putonghua, and the peripheral, folkloric discourse from below, articulated in local dialects. Whereas the central, official discourse attempts to manipulate the peripheral, folkloric discourse for ideological reasons, the latter ends up simultaneously conforming to, and subverting, the former; both involve ambiguity, nuance, and indeterminacy.

1 According to data culled from a CCTV audience group, the Gala has enjoyed the largest national audience

for almost two decades, as the average rating per family between 1996 and 2003 was 89.5 percent. See Wang

Liejun 王列軍 , “Guanxi shijiao xia de quanli shijian: 21 nian chunjie lianhuan wanhui de shehuixue jiexi” 關係

視角下的權力實踐︰21年春節聯歡晚會的社會學解析 [“Power Practice with a Relational Perspective: a

Sociological Analysis of Spring Festival Gala in the Past 21 Years”], Master’s thesis, Beijing University, 2003.

2 Although the terms folk in English and minjian in Chinese are not exactly equivalent, my approach blends their

connotations in each language under the umbrella word folk. Therefore, on the one hand, “folk” means “traditional,

premodern, preindustrial, and pretechnological.” In this sense, folk culture could, according to Michael Kammen,

signify “traditional” popular culture as contrasted with the technologically transformed, modern popular culture.

See Michael Kammen, American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century (New York:

Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 6. On the other hand, the term connotes “among the ordinary people” (what minjian

means literally in Chinese), “vernacular” (not elite or highbrow), “not associated with academic institutions,” or

“not associated with official government.”

Bakhtin’s Theory of Folk Humor

Bakhtin’s theory, with its fascination with folk culture and obsession with socio-ideologically charged language, provides an insightful theoretical framework for this study. In his oft-cited study Rabelais and His World (1968), Bakhtin examines the culture of folk humor in the spirit of carnival, as depicted in François Rabelais’s series of novels La Vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel (The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel, 16th C.), written in vernacular French in the Renaissance. According to Bakhtin, the ideal of carnival comprises festive, ritual spectacles such as pageants, comic shows, and open-air amusement, with the participation of clowns and fools. As carnival is predicated on the basis of laughter, Bakhtin ascribes great importance to the nature of carnivalesque laughter:

It is, first of all, a festive laughter. Therefore it is not an individual reaction to some isolated “comic” event. Carnival laughter is the laughter of all the people. Second, it is universal in scope; it is directed at all and everyone, including the carnival’s participants. The entire world is seen in its droll aspect, in its gay relativity. Third, the laughter is ambivalent: it is gay, triumphant, and at the same time mocking, deriding. It asserts and denies, it buries and revives. Such is the laughter of the carnival.3

Fundamental to the corporeal, collective nature of carnival laughter is what Bakhtin terms “grotesque realism.” As its essential principles are degradation and debasement, the function of grotesque realism is to transfer things on a high, spiritual, ideal, abstract level to a low, material, bodily, and concrete level. Grotesque realism presents the human body as multiple, bulging, over- and undersized, protuberant, and aged. Again, the grotesque body in its exaggerated and distorted form is ambivalent and contradictory. On one hand, it is “ugly, monstrous, hideous from the point of view of ‘classic’ aesthetics, that is, the aesthetics of the ready-made and the completed.”4 On the other hand, Bakhtin celebrates the unfinished and open body for its positive force, a growing, regenerating, renewing, and creative one. The unity of image and sound demands that the grotesque body seek a grotesque language. For Bakhtin, such grotesque language may take the forms of comic verbal compositions (oral and written), such as parodies and travesties, and various genres of billingsgate, including abusive language, profanities, oaths, slang, humor, popular tricks, and jokes.5 Consistent with his positive assessment of the lower stratum of the human body, Bakhtin celebrates the vitality of all sorts of “low” and “dirty” folk humor: the forbidden laughter that is usually excluded from official ideology.

Among other forms of carnivalesque language, Bakhtin highlights the tension between

3 M.M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1968), 11-12; emphasis added.

4 Ibid., 25.

5 Ibid., 5-17.

104 105

In the years since Zhongyang dianshitai chunjie lianhuan wanhui 中央電視台春節聯歡

晚會 (The China Central Television’s Spring Festival Eve Gala Performance) began in 1983, it has gradually evolved as part of China’s ritual celebration of its biggest folk festival, the Spring Festival (Lunar New Year). As a significant cultural event, annually organized and produced by the state media CCTV, the Gala is often seen as a valuable opportunity for the Party or the state to convey central, state-sanctioned, official ideology to the populace. Signaling the official, mainstream discourse, the national language, Putonghua Mandarin 普通話 (common speech Mandarin), is predominantly employed in the Gala performance. Xiaopin 小品 (comic sketches), the best-received popular show in the Gala, evokes laughter among the largest national audience.1 Approximately since the early 1990s, xiaopin has evolved from a training exercise in urban academic drama schools to a dialogue-based comic genre infused with the spirit of folk culture— minjian wenhua 民間文化 in Chinese.2 Correspondingly, the xiaopin performers, drawn largely from the “lower,” local, rural folk art troupes, tend to speak various local dialects 方言 (fangyan) or Putonghua with distinct accents. Zhao Benshan 趙本山, the acclaimed king of the comic sketch, often played a comic role in Errenzhuan 二人轉, a regional performing arts form of duet in Northeast China. His sketches, rendered in Northeast Mandarin, are deeply rooted in the traditional peasant Errenzhuan art that he and his scriptwriters have grown up with. By examining the laughter evoked by the language-based comic sketches in the Gala, with a focus on Zhao Benshan and Errenzhuan, this essay explores the dynamic dialogue between the central, official discourse from above, represented by Putonghua, and the peripheral, folkloric discourse from below, articulated in local dialects. Whereas the central, official discourse attempts to manipulate the peripheral, folkloric discourse for ideological reasons, the latter ends up simultaneously conforming to, and subverting, the former; both involve ambiguity, nuance, and indeterminacy.

1 According to data culled from a CCTV audience group, the Gala has enjoyed the largest national audience

for almost two decades, as the average rating per family between 1996 and 2003 was 89.5 percent. See Wang

Liejun 王列軍, “Guanxi shijiao xia de quanli shijian: 21 nian chunjie lianhuan wanhui de shehuixue jiexi” 關係

視角下的權力實踐︰21年春節聯歡晚會的社會學解析 [“Power Practice with a Relational Perspective: a

Sociological Analysis of Spring Festival Gala in the Past 21 Years”], Master’s thesis, Beijing University, 2003.

2 Although the terms folk in English and minjian in Chinese are not exactly equivalent, my approach blends their

connotations in each language under the umbrella word folk. Therefore, on the one hand, “folk” means “traditional,

premodern, preindustrial, and pretechnological.” In this sense, folk culture could, according to Michael Kammen,

signify “traditional” popular culture as contrasted with the technologically transformed, modern popular culture.

See Michael Kammen, American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century (New York:

Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 6. On the other hand, the term connotes “among the ordinary people” (what minjian

means literally in Chinese), “vernacular” (not elite or highbrow), “not associated with academic institutions,” or

“not associated with official government.”

Bakhtin’s Theory of Folk Humor

Bakhtin’s theory, with its fascination with folk culture and obsession with socio-ideologically charged language, provides an insightful theoretical framework for this study. In his oft-cited study Rabelais and His World (1968), Bakhtin examines the culture of folk humor in the spirit of carnival, as depicted in François Rabelais’s series of novels La Vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel (The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel, 16th C.), written in vernacular French in the Renaissance. According to Bakhtin, the ideal of carnival comprises festive, ritual spectacles such as pageants, comic shows, and open-air amusement, with the participation of clowns and fools. As carnival is predicated on the basis of laughter, Bakhtin ascribes great importance to the nature of carnivalesque laughter:

It is, first of all, a festive laughter. Therefore it is not an individual reaction to some isolated “comic” event. Carnival laughter is the laughter of all the people. Second, it is universal in scope; it is directed at all and everyone, including the carnival’s participants. The entire world is seen in its droll aspect, in its gay relativity. Third, the laughter is ambivalent: it is gay, triumphant, and at the same time mocking, deriding. It asserts and denies, it buries and revives. Such is the laughter of the carnival.3

Fundamental to the corporeal, collective nature of carnival laughter is what Bakhtin terms “grotesque realism.” As its essential principles are degradation and debasement, the function of grotesque realism is to transfer things on a high, spiritual, ideal, abstract level to a low, material, bodily, and concrete level. Grotesque realism presents the human body as multiple, bulging, over- and undersized, protuberant, and aged. Again, the grotesque body in its exaggerated and distorted form is ambivalent and contradictory. On one hand, it is “ugly, monstrous, hideous from the point of view of ‘classic’ aesthetics, that is, the aesthetics of the ready-made and the completed.”4 On the other hand, Bakhtin celebrates the unfinished and open body for its positive force, a growing, regenerating, renewing, and creative one. The unity of image and sound demands that the grotesque body seek a grotesque language. For Bakhtin, such grotesque language may take the forms of comic verbal compositions (oral and written), such as parodies and travesties, and various genres of billingsgate, including abusive language, profanities, oaths, slang, humor, popular tricks, and jokes.5 Consistent with his positive assessment of the lower stratum of the human body, Bakhtin celebrates the vitality of all sorts of “low” and “dirty” folk humor: the forbidden laughter that is usually excluded from official ideology.

Among other forms of carnivalesque language, Bakhtin highlights the tension between

3 M.M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1968), 11-12; emphasis added.

4 Ibid., 25.

5 Ibid., 5-17.

106 107

Latin, on the one hand, and the French vernacular or dialect employed in Rabelais’s novel, on the other:

The line of demarcation between two cultures—the official and the popular—was drawn along the line dividing Latin from the vernacular. The vernacular invaded all the spheres of ideology and expelled Latin. It brought new forms of thought (ambivalence) and new evaluations; this was the language of life, of material work and mores, of the “lowly,” mostly humorous genres, the free speech of the marketplace (although popular language, of course, was not homogeneous and contained some elements of official speech). On the other hand, Latin was the medium of the official medieval world. Popular culture was but feebly reflected in it and was distorted, especially in the Latin branch of grotesque realism.6

Local dialect, alongside other socio-ideologically charged languages and speech styles, is an important component of Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia. In heteroglossia, a phenomenon found in Renaissance as well as in contemporary Chinese literature, a local dialect is employed to decentralize the central discourse, to distort the standard form, and to excite a perception of critiquing differences and contradictions masked by the master narrative.7 In the above-cited passage, Bakhtin provides a historic account of heteroglossia. A prominent cultural phenomenon of the Renaissance was that various vernaculars or dialects besieged, penetrated, and relativized Latin and all the unitary, ecclesiastical, feudal, and political discourses that expressed themselves through it. In recognition of the performative power of the vernacular, Bakhtin emphasizes that rather than composing a clear-cut binary opposition, the discourse at the center and the discourse at the periphery form a dynamic, dialogic relationship of interpenetration, interaction, and inter- illumination. “Alongside the centripetal forces, the centrifugal forces of language carry on their uninterrupted work; alongside verbal-ideological centralization and unification, the uninterrupted processes of decentralization and disunification go forward.”8

Liu Kang defines Bakhtin’s heteroglossia as a theory for times of cultural transition: for example, for the ancient Greco-Roman era, the Renaissance, and the turn of the twentieth century.9 Bakhtin’s theory definitely has broad implications for the scene in contemporary

6 Ibid., 465-66.

7 Liao Xianhao 廖咸浩, “Fangyan de wenxue juese: sanzhong houjiegou shijao” 方言的文學角色：三種後結

構視角 [“The Literary Role of Local Dialect: Three Post-structuralist Viewpoints”], Zhongwai wenxue 中外文

學 (Taibei) 19.2 (1990): 96-99.

8 Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (Austin: University of Texas Press,

1981), 272.

9 Liu Kang 劉康 , Duihua de xuansheng: Bahejin de wenhua zhuanxing lilun 對話的喧聲——巴赫金的文化

China. Undergoing a comparable cultural transition in the reform years, China has witnessed an increasing encroachment of popular, vernacular culture on the realm of official, elite culture, and a further blurring of the boundary between high and low culture. For example, Geremie Barmé observes “an uneasy coexistence” among various forms of culture since the early 1990s, “one characterized more by constant compromise rather than simply a mutual antagonism or entrenched opposition.”10 CCTV’s annual Spring Festival Gala constitutes precisely such a field of “uneasy coexistence,” where the official, state-sanctioned culture, the modern, technologically transformed popular culture, and the traditional, premodern, preindustrial folk culture form a dynamic dialogical relationship, exhibiting Bakhtinian tension, contradiction, and ambivalence.

As the Chinese New Year celebration is fundamentally of folk-cultural origin, the CCTV Spring Festival Gala shares some elements of the utopian ideal of Bakhtinian carnival. The almost five-hour-long performance is an extravagant display of singing and dancing, particularly by groups; language-based comic shows including xiangsheng 相聲 (comic cross-talk) and xiaopin; xiqu 戲曲 (folk opera) performance; and other variety shows. The comic, clownish role, as a constant element of the New Year celebration, is manifested most prominently in the Gala’s comic sketches, as later analysis will show. The collective laughter the Gala evokes is shared by the roughly 90 percent of Chinese families nationwide watching the show. Coupled with other festive rituals such as nianyefan 年夜飯 (New Year’s Eve feast) and shouye 守夜 (staying up late or all night on New Year’s Eve), the Gala serves a basic function of carnival in celebrating the death of the old and the birth of the new.

Conversely, many critics point out that even Bakhtin’s notion of a carnival is a licensed affair, sanctioned or endorsed by the authorities themselves, and that, therefore, the Bakhtinian carnival spirit does not necessarily undermine authority. Max Gluckman asserts that although the “rites of reversal obviously include a protest against the established order […] they are intended to preserve and strengthen the established order.”11 In the Chinese form of the carnival during the Lunar New Year, the state broadcast media CCTV sees the Spring Festival Gala as an invaluable opportunity to inculcate the Party ideology into the populace, as well as to showcase the official mainstream culture. Nevertheless, in an era of cultural transition, the state media policy has correspondingly had to undergo gradual infrastructural changes. Therefore, Bakhtinian “grotesque realism,” characteristic of folk culture, is allowed temporarily to rupture hegemony, challenge authority, and dissolve ideology. However, this brief carnivalesque laughter, generated by comic sketches and the like, in turn serves to solidify the position of the long-term Party leadership. Prepared under the scrutiny of censors, each year the Gala is carefully orchestrated to stay safely within the Party line, initiating and structuring a process of self-containment and

轉型理論 [Dialogic Heteroglossia: Bakhtin’s Theory of Cultural Transition] (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue

chubanshe, 1995).

10 Geremie Barmé, In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999),

100.

11 Max Gluckman, Custom and Conflict in Africa (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965), 109.

106 107

Latin, on the one hand, and the French vernacular or dialect employed in Rabelais’s novel, on the other:

The line of demarcation between two cultures—the official and the popular—was drawn along the line dividing Latin from the vernacular. The vernacular invaded all the spheres of ideology and expelled Latin. It brought new forms of thought (ambivalence) and new evaluations; this was the language of life, of material work and mores, of the “lowly,” mostly humorous genres, the free speech of the marketplace (although popular language, of course, was not homogeneous and contained some elements of official speech). On the other hand, Latin was the medium of the official medieval world. Popular culture was but feebly reflected in it and was distorted, especially in the Latin branch of grotesque realism.6

Local dialect, alongside other socio-ideologically charged languages and speech styles, is an important component of Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia. In heteroglossia, a phenomenon found in Renaissance as well as in contemporary Chinese literature, a local dialect is employed to decentralize the central discourse, to distort the standard form, and to excite a perception of critiquing differences and contradictions masked by the master narrative.7 In the above-cited passage, Bakhtin provides a historic account of heteroglossia. A prominent cultural phenomenon of the Renaissance was that various vernaculars or dialects besieged, penetrated, and relativized Latin and all the unitary, ecclesiastical, feudal, and political discourses that expressed themselves through it. In recognition of the performative power of the vernacular, Bakhtin emphasizes that rather than composing a clear-cut binary opposition, the discourse at the center and the discourse at the periphery form a dynamic, dialogic relationship of interpenetration, interaction, and inter- illumination. “Alongside the centripetal forces, the centrifugal forces of language carry on their uninterrupted work; alongside verbal-ideological centralization and unification, the uninterrupted processes of decentralization and disunification go forward.”8

Liu Kang defines Bakhtin’s heteroglossia as a theory for times of cultural transition: for example, for the ancient Greco-Roman era, the Renaissance, and the turn of the twentieth century.9 Bakhtin’s theory definitely has broad implications for the scene in contemporary

6 Ibid., 465-66.

7 Liao Xianhao 廖咸浩 , “Fangyan de wenxue juese: sanzhong houjiegou shijao” 方言的文學角色：三種後結

構視角 [“The Literary Role of Local Dialect: Three Post-structuralist Viewpoints”], Zhongwai wenxue 中外文

學 (Taibei) 19.2 (1990): 96-99.

8 Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (Austin: University of Texas Press,

1981), 272.

9 Liu Kang 劉康 , Duihua de xuansheng: Bahejin de wenhua zhuanxing lilun 對話的喧聲——巴赫金的文化

China. Undergoing a comparable cultural transition in the reform years, China has witnessed an increasing encroachment of popular, vernacular culture on the realm of official, elite culture, and a further blurring of the boundary between high and low culture. For example, Geremie Barmé observes “an uneasy coexistence” among various forms of culture since the early 1990s, “one characterized more by constant compromise rather than simply a mutual antagonism or entrenched opposition.”10 CCTV’s annual Spring Festival Gala constitutes precisely such a field of “uneasy coexistence,” where the official, state-sanctioned culture, the modern, technologically transformed popular culture, and the traditional, premodern, preindustrial folk culture form a dynamic dialogical relationship, exhibiting Bakhtinian tension, contradiction, and ambivalence.

As the Chinese New Year celebration is fundamentally of folk-cultural origin, the CCTV Spring Festival Gala shares some elements of the utopian ideal of Bakhtinian carnival. The almost five-hour-long performance is an extravagant display of singing and dancing, particularly by groups; language-based comic shows including xiangsheng 相聲 (comic cross-talk) and xiaopin; xiqu 戲曲 (folk opera) performance; and other variety shows. The comic, clownish role, as a constant element of the New Year celebration, is manifested most prominently in the Gala’s comic sketches, as later analysis will show. The collective laughter the Gala evokes is shared by the roughly 90 percent of Chinese families nationwide watching the show. Coupled with other festive rituals such as nianyefan 年夜飯 (New Year’s Eve feast) and shouye 守夜 (staying up late or all night on New Year’s Eve), the Gala serves a basic function of carnival in celebrating the death of the old and the birth of the new.

Conversely, many critics point out that even Bakhtin’s notion of a carnival is a licensed affair, sanctioned or endorsed by the authorities themselves, and that, therefore, the Bakhtinian carnival spirit does not necessarily undermine authority. Max Gluckman asserts that although the “rites of reversal obviously include a protest against the established order […] they are intended to preserve and strengthen the established order.”11 In the Chinese form of the carnival during the Lunar New Year, the state broadcast media CCTV sees the Spring Festival Gala as an invaluable opportunity to inculcate the Party ideology into the populace, as well as to showcase the official mainstream culture. Nevertheless, in an era of cultural transition, the state media policy has correspondingly had to undergo gradual infrastructural changes. Therefore, Bakhtinian “grotesque realism,” characteristic of folk culture, is allowed temporarily to rupture hegemony, challenge authority, and dissolve ideology. However, this brief carnivalesque laughter, generated by comic sketches and the like, in turn serves to solidify the position of the long-term Party leadership. Prepared under the scrutiny of censors, each year the Gala is carefully orchestrated to stay safely within the Party line, initiating and structuring a process of self-containment and

轉型理論 [Dialogic Heteroglossia: Bakhtin’s Theory of Cultural Transition] (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue

chubanshe, 1995).

10 Geremie Barmé, In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999),

100.

11 Max Gluckman, Custom and Conflict in Africa (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965), 109.

108 109

ambivalence.

Evolution of Xiaopin in CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala

Xiaopin, which literally means a short skit, originally referred to a theatrical performance sketch serving as a training exercise in metropolitan, professional film and drama schools. This academic acting tradition is discernible in early Gala sketches by the famous film actors Chen Peisi 陳佩斯 and Zhu Shimao 朱時茂, who both largely speak Putonghua. Chen plays a comic role as an extra in a movie shoot in the sketches “Chi miantiao” 吃麵條 (“Eating Noodles,” 1984) and “Pai dianying” 拍電影 (“Shooting a Film,” 1985). The mode of “sketch within a sketch” is also in evidence when Chen plays a supporting role as a traitor who tries by every means to steal the show from the lead role, an Eighth Route Army officer played by Zhu in the sketch “Zhujue yu peijue” 主角與配角 (“The Leading Actor and the Supporting Actor,” 1990). The playfully subversive theme in this sketch seems to exhibit the genre’s potential to incorporate carnivaleque, folk-cultural elements. Lü Xinyu further points out that xiaopin is better suited than either xiqu or xiangsheng for modern television transmission: the plot development of the typical sketch framed in time and space corresponds to the linear movement of the television camera.12 Thus the televised xiaopin proves to be a key comic genre for the CCTV Gala to legitimatize itself as a traditional festive ritual celebration. The comic, clownish role, always indispensable in rural folk festival celebrations, is manifested most prominently in the increasingly “folkified” comic sketches.

In the CCTV Gala of the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the comic figure played by the school- trained professionals gradually evolved from an urbanite who speaks Putonghua into a “lower,” rural peasant who speaks a variant of Northern Mandarin or who speaks Putonghua Mandarin with a distinct accent. Guo Da 郭達, from Xi’an Huajuyuan 西安話劇院 (the Xi’an Spoken Drama Theater) at that time, plays a “feudal” peasant husband and speaks Shaanxi Mandarin. He is anxiously hoping for an infant son instead of a daughter in “Chanfang menqian” 產房門前 (“In Front of the Delivery Room,” 1987). In “Lanhan xiangqin” 懶漢相親 (“A Slacker’s Blind Date,” 1989), Song Dandan 宋丹丹, trained in Beijing Renyi 北京人藝 (the Beijing People’s Art Theatre), speaks a strongly accented Mandarin. She plays a single-minded, provincial rural young woman, whose most memorable line is “My name is Wei Shufen, female, 29 years old, not married yet.” 俺叫魏淑芬，女二十九歲，至今未婚。In “Chaosheng youjidui” 超生游擊

隊 (“Birth-quota-exceeding Guerrilla,” 1990), Song and Huang Hong 黃宏, a Shandong-native comedian from a Shenyang military performance troupe, both speaking an identifiable Northeast Mandarin, play a shabbily dressed and uncouthly behaved rural couple. With three daughters already in tow, the expectant wife is protuberant with a fourth. In order to evade the heavy fine demanded by the Birth Control Policy, they lead a guerrilla-like vagrant life.

12 Lü Xinyu 呂新雨, “Jiedu 2002 nian chunjie lianhuan wanhui” 解讀2002年春節聯歡晚會 [“An Interpretation

of 2002 CCTV Spring Festival Gala”], Du shu 讀書 [Reading] 1 (2003): 93-94.

Roughly at the same time, the casting of xiaopin actors also quickly turned away from urban stage actors, trained by the academic schools, and reached down to favor more authentic peasant performers of lower, regional folk art troupes. The late Zhao Lirong 趙麗蓉 had long played caidan 彩旦 (the female comic role) in Pingju 評劇, a folk opera allegedly originating among the village beggars in the Hebei area. Zhao Benshan, Pan Changjiang 潘長江, and Gong Hanlin 鞏漢林 had traditionally played comic roles in Errenzhuan in their home villages. For instance, Zhao Benshan’s hometown is at the bottom of the administrative hierarchy—Shizui village, in Lianhua town, Kaiyuan county, Tieling city, in the Liaoning Province. Mirroring these casting changes, the sketch scriptwriters were increasingly drawn from those who had been working on folk art production. For example, Shi Lin, who wrote most of Zhao Lirong’s sketches, works in a Quju 曲劇 troupe in Beijing. Zhang Chao, Cui Kai, He Qingkui, and Zhang Huizhong, the scriptwriters or directors responsible for most of Zhao Benshan’s sketches, are peasant artists on Errenzhuan in the local folk art troupes in Northern Liaoning.

In the various dialect-speaking sketches in the CCTV Galas, a key difference between the staged Mandarin varieties and the standard Putonghua Mandarin is the Chinese characters’ tonal change in the phonetic sense (see the table below).

Performer Mandarin Variety

Tones in the Sketches

Tones in Putonghua

Sketch Name Year

Chen Peisi Mandarin with a Uygur accent

烏魯木齊 (Urümqi) “Yangrouchuan” (Skewering the Shish Kebab)

1986 wu53 lu55 mu55 qi53

wu55 lu214 mu51 qi35

Shen Fa Sichuan Mandarin

打麻將 (“play Mahjong”) “Jie Qi” (Pick up the Wife)

1988 da42 ma31 jiang 12

da214 ma35 jiang51

Song Dandan Mandarin with an unidentifiable accent

俺娘說 (“my mom said”) “Lanhan xiangqin” (A Slacker’s Blind Date)

1989 ŋæ~ 35 niang45 suo55

an214 niang35 shuo55

Ni Ping Shandong Rongcheng Mandarin

天氣預報

(“weather forecast”) “Tianqi yubao” (Weather Forecast)

1990

tian31 qi21 yu12 baor21

tian55 qi51 yu51 bao51

Huang Hong Northeast Mandarin

知道不？(“you know?”) “Chaosheng youjidui” (Birth-quota-exceed- ing guerrilla)

1990 zi35 dao bu44?

zhi55 dao51 bu?

Guo Da Shaanxi Xi’an Man- darin

換大米 (“exchanging rice”) “Huan dami” (Exchanging Rice)

1991 huan55 da55 mi53

huan51 da51 mi213

108 109

ambivalence.

Evolution of Xiaopin in CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala

Xiaopin, which literally means a short skit, originally referred to a theatrical performance sketch serving as a training exercise in metropolitan, professional film and drama schools. This academic acting tradition is discernible in early Gala sketches by the famous film actors Chen Peisi 陳佩斯 and Zhu Shimao 朱時茂, who both largely speak Putonghua. Chen plays a comic role as an extra in a movie shoot in the sketches “Chi miantiao” 吃麵條 (“Eating Noodles,” 1984) and “Pai dianying” 拍電影 (“Shooting a Film,” 1985). The mode of “sketch within a sketch” is also in evidence when Chen plays a supporting role as a traitor who tries by every means to steal the show from the lead role, an Eighth Route Army officer played by Zhu in the sketch “Zhujue yu peijue” 主角與配角 (“The Leading Actor and the Supporting Actor,” 1990). The playfully subversive theme in this sketch seems to exhibit the genre’s potential to incorporate carnivaleque, folk-cultural elements. Lü Xinyu further points out that xiaopin is better suited than either xiqu or xiangsheng for modern television transmission: the plot development of the typical sketch framed in time and space corresponds to the linear movement of the television camera.12 Thus the televised xiaopin proves to be a key comic genre for the CCTV Gala to legitimatize itself as a traditional festive ritual celebration. The comic, clownish role, always indispensable in rural folk festival celebrations, is manifested most prominently in the increasingly “folkified” comic sketches.

In the CCTV Gala of the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the comic figure played by the school- trained professionals gradually evolved from an urbanite who speaks Putonghua into a “lower,” rural peasant who speaks a variant of Northern Mandarin or who speaks Putonghua Mandarin with a distinct accent. Guo Da 郭達, from Xi’an Huajuyuan 西安話劇院 (the Xi’an Spoken Drama Theater) at that time, plays a “feudal” peasant husband and speaks Shaanxi Mandarin. He is anxiously hoping for an infant son instead of a daughter in “Chanfang menqian” 產房門前 (“In Front of the Delivery Room,” 1987). In “Lanhan xiangqin” 懶漢相親 (“A Slacker’s Blind Date,” 1989), Song Dandan 宋丹丹, trained in Beijing Renyi 北京人藝 (the Beijing People’s Art Theatre), speaks a strongly accented Mandarin. She plays a single-minded, provincial rural young woman, whose most memorable line is “My name is Wei Shufen, female, 29 years old, not married yet.” 俺叫魏淑芬，女二十九歲，至今未婚。In “Chaosheng youjidui” 超生游擊

隊 (“Birth-quota-exceeding Guerrilla,” 1990), Song and Huang Hong 黃宏, a Shandong-native comedian from a Shenyang military performance troupe, both speaking an identifiable Northeast Mandarin, play a shabbily dressed and uncouthly behaved rural couple. With three daughters already in tow, the expectant wife is protuberant with a fourth. In order to evade the heavy fine demanded by the Birth Control Policy, they lead a guerrilla-like vagrant life.

12 Lü Xinyu 呂新雨, “Jiedu 2002 nian chunjie lianhuan wanhui” 解讀2002年春節聯歡晚會 [“An Interpretation

of 2002 CCTV Spring Festival Gala”], Du shu 讀書 [Reading] 1 (2003): 93-94.

Roughly at the same time, the casting of xiaopin actors also quickly turned away from urban stage actors, trained by the academic schools, and reached down to favor more authentic peasant performers of lower, regional folk art troupes. The late Zhao Lirong 趙麗蓉 had long played caidan 彩旦 (the female comic role) in Pingju 評劇, a folk opera allegedly originating among the village beggars in the Hebei area. Zhao Benshan, Pan Changjiang 潘長江, and Gong Hanlin 鞏漢林 had traditionally played comic roles in Errenzhuan in their home villages. For instance, Zhao Benshan’s hometown is at the bottom of the administrative hierarchy—Shizui village, in Lianhua town, Kaiyuan county, Tieling city, in the Liaoning Province. Mirroring these casting changes, the sketch scriptwriters were increasingly drawn from those who had been working on folk art production. For example, Shi Lin, who wrote most of Zhao Lirong’s sketches, works in a Quju 曲劇 troupe in Beijing. Zhang Chao, Cui Kai, He Qingkui, and Zhang Huizhong, the scriptwriters or directors responsible for most of Zhao Benshan’s sketches, are peasant artists on Errenzhuan in the local folk art troupes in Northern Liaoning.

In the various dialect-speaking sketches in the CCTV Galas, a key difference between the staged Mandarin varieties and the standard Putonghua Mandarin is the Chinese characters’ tonal change in the phonetic sense (see the table below).

Performer Mandarin Variety

Tones in the Sketches

Tones in Putonghua

Sketch Name Year

Chen Peisi Mandarin with a Uygur accent

烏魯木齊 (Urümqi) “Yangrouchuan” (Skewering the Shish Kebab)

1986 wu53 lu55 mu55 qi53

wu55 lu214 mu51 qi35

Shen Fa Sichuan Mandarin

打麻將 (“play Mahjong”) “Jie Qi” (Pick up the Wife)

1988 da42 ma31 jiang 12

da214 ma35 jiang51

Song Dandan Mandarin with an unidentifiable accent

俺娘說 (“my mom said”) “Lanhan xiangqin” (A Slacker’s Blind Date)

1989 ŋæ~ 35 niang45 suo55

an214 niang35 shuo55

Ni Ping Shandong Rongcheng Mandarin

天氣預報

(“weather forecast”) “Tianqi yubao” (Weather Forecast)

1990

tian31 qi21 yu12 baor21

tian55 qi51 yu51 bao51

Huang Hong Northeast Mandarin

知道不？(“you know?”) “Chaosheng youjidui” (Birth-quota-exceed- ing guerrilla)

1990 zi35 dao bu44?

zhi55 dao51 bu?

Guo Da Shaanxi Xi’an Man- darin

換大米 (“exchanging rice”) “Huan dami” (Exchanging Rice)

1991 huan55 da55 mi53

huan51 da51 mi213

110 111

Zhao Ben- shan

Northeast Mandarin

別緊張 (“don’t be nervous”) “Wo xiang you ge jia” (I Want a Family)

1992 bie51 jin214 zhang22

bie35 jin214 zhang55

Zhao Lirong Hebei Tang- shan Man- darin

有啥說啥 (“say whatever you want”)

“Mama de jintian” (My Mother’s Today)

1993

you214 sha53 shuo35 sha51

you214 sha35 shuo55 sha35

From the table, the Mandarin varieties, identifiable or unidentifiable as specific dialects, could be viewed as forms of accent liberation from the single Putonghua Mandarin. The intonation of the official language can relatively freely undergo deployment and differentiation within the range of its basic, standard tone. In this sense, Putonghua is no longer uni-accentual, isolated or closed, but can be exaggerated, distorted, or diffused, thus becoming multi-accentual, plural, unfinished, and unpredictable.

Among others, Zhao Lirong’s sketch “Yingxiong muqin de yitian” 英雄母親的一天 (“A Day in the Life of the Hero’s Mother,” 1989), scripted by Shi Lin and Zang Li, manifests the folkloric subversion enacted by the local dialects against the official discourse represented by Putonghua. In this sketch, Zhao Lirong plays an ordinary rural old woman speaking Hebei Tangshan Mandarin. Upon going out to buy tofu, Zhao is visited by a Putonghua-speaking television director, surnamed Hou. He has come to make a documentary of Zhao’s daily life in celebration of March 8th International Women’s Day. Because her son became a hero for capturing a criminal, Zhao is cast by Hou as a model of a hero’s mother. Director Hou reads the bombastic and grandiose conception for shooting the documentary from his folder:

Through you, we want to set up a glorious image of a hero’s mother. Through you, we want to capture the spiritual perspective and the characteristics of the time period of women in the 80s; through you, we will track how the hero grows up; through you, we also want to reflect the aesthetic pursuits of Chinese women.

The subgenre of the “model-setup” has been an entrenched propaganda technique since the Maoist era. In it, the grand, ideal, abstract ideology is materialized and personalized by a concrete, real human body. In this sketch, the director, or the Party, the authority, attempts to materialize Zhao’s body and to have her project the morality of a hero’s mother in the 1980s: an educated, urban, fashionable, and extraordinary woman with a positive outlook on life. However, Hou’s attempt at materializing the ideal is thwarted by Zhao’s materialization working in the opposite direction, that is, toward degradation and debasement, the essential principle of Bakhtin’s grotesque realism. At every turn, Hou’s sublime, ideal, spiritual, and grand message is lowered by Zhao’s flippant and vulgar utterances.

Hou: (following his purported reasons for shooting) Do you understand what I’ve just said?

Zhao: (raising head from doing chores): Oh, yes. [I] understand… Well, what did you say just now?

Hou: (disappointed) Anyway, stay where you are, and let’s get to work… What do you do when you get up every morning? I mean, the FIRST thing?

Zhao: The first thing? Can I say anything? Hou: Say whatever you’d like. Zhao: The first thing is to GO TO THE TOILET.

Hilariously, her response deflates the director’s expectation of something lofty or unique, and lowers the interview to quotidian, bodily functions such as excretion. Zhao’s materialization of her own body defies the materialization expected or assigned by the director: elsewhere, she dismisses the movements of disco dance, a fashionable metropolitan cultural form at the time, as less attractive than the motions of a policeman directing traffic in her neighborhood. She sings the then-popular Taiwanese melodrama theme song “Zuoye xingchen” 昨夜星辰 (“The Constellation Last Night”) so that it gradually devolves into a Pingju tune. And she never correctly pronounces the title of the “meaningful” ancient story about the literati, “Sima Guang za gang” 司 馬光砸缸 (“Sima Guang Breaking the Jar”),13 whereas she is quite familiar with “superstitious” folk ghost stories and fairy stories.

Puns are also a ubiquitous element in the xiaopin shows as they appear in the Gala. Punning is one of the forms of what Bakhtin calls grammatica jocosa, which, as Peter Stallybrass and Allon White explain, is a form of locution where “grammatical order is transgressed to reveal erotic and obscene or merely materially satisfying counter-meaning.”14 They further cite Arthur’s argument on the punning in Bakhtinian style:

[The pun] violates and so unveils the structure of prevailing (pre- vailing) convention; and it provokes laughter. Samuel Beckett’s punning pronouncement “In the beginning was the Pun” sets the pun against official Word and at the same time, as puns often do, sets free a chain of other puns. So, too, carnival sets itself up in a punning relationship with official culture and enables a plural, unfixed, comic view of the world.15

13 The ancient story of “Sima Guang za gang” tells how the young Sima Guang of the Song dynasty saved a fellow

child who had fallen into a big jar, filled with water, by bravely breaking the jar with a stone.

14 Peter Stallybrass, and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

1986), 10-11.

15 Ibid., 11.

110 111

Zhao Ben- shan

Northeast Mandarin

別緊張 (“don’t be nervous”) “Wo xiang you ge jia” (I Want a Family)

1992 bie51 jin214 zhang22

bie35 jin214 zhang55

Zhao Lirong Hebei Tang- shan Man- darin

有啥說啥 (“say whatever you want”)

“Mama de jintian” (My Mother’s Today)

1993

you214 sha53 shuo35 sha51

you214 sha35 shuo55 sha35

From the table, the Mandarin varieties, identifiable or unidentifiable as specific dialects, could be viewed as forms of accent liberation from the single Putonghua Mandarin. The intonation of the official language can relatively freely undergo deployment and differentiation within the range of its basic, standard tone. In this sense, Putonghua is no longer uni-accentual, isolated or closed, but can be exaggerated, distorted, or diffused, thus becoming multi-accentual, plural, unfinished, and unpredictable.

Among others, Zhao Lirong’s sketch “Yingxiong muqin de yitian” 英雄母親的一天 (“A Day in the Life of the Hero’s Mother,” 1989), scripted by Shi Lin and Zang Li, manifests the folkloric subversion enacted by the local dialects against the official discourse represented by Putonghua. In this sketch, Zhao Lirong plays an ordinary rural old woman speaking Hebei Tangshan Mandarin. Upon going out to buy tofu, Zhao is visited by a Putonghua-speaking television director, surnamed Hou. He has come to make a documentary of Zhao’s daily life in celebration of March 8th International Women’s Day. Because her son became a hero for capturing a criminal, Zhao is cast by Hou as a model of a hero’s mother. Director Hou reads the bombastic and grandiose conception for shooting the documentary from his folder:

Through you, we want to set up a glorious image of a hero’s mother. Through you, we want to capture the spiritual perspective and the characteristics of the time period of women in the 80s; through you, we will track how the hero grows up; through you, we also want to reflect the aesthetic pursuits of Chinese women.

The subgenre of the “model-setup” has been an entrenched propaganda technique since the Maoist era. In it, the grand, ideal, abstract ideology is materialized and personalized by a concrete, real human body. In this sketch, the director, or the Party, the authority, attempts to materialize Zhao’s body and to have her project the morality of a hero’s mother in the 1980s: an educated, urban, fashionable, and extraordinary woman with a positive outlook on life. However, Hou’s attempt at materializing the ideal is thwarted by Zhao’s materialization working in the opposite direction, that is, toward degradation and debasement, the essential principle of Bakhtin’s grotesque realism. At every turn, Hou’s sublime, ideal, spiritual, and grand message is lowered by Zhao’s flippant and vulgar utterances.

Hou: (following his purported reasons for shooting) Do you understand what I’ve just said?

Zhao: (raising head from doing chores): Oh, yes. [I] understand… Well, what did you say just now?

Hou: (disappointed) Anyway, stay where you are, and let’s get to work… What do you do when you get up every morning? I mean, the FIRST thing?

Zhao: The first thing? Can I say anything? Hou: Say whatever you’d like. Zhao: The first thing is to GO TO THE TOILET.

Hilariously, her response deflates the director’s expectation of something lofty or unique, and lowers the interview to quotidian, bodily functions such as excretion. Zhao’s materialization of her own body defies the materialization expected or assigned by the director: elsewhere, she dismisses the movements of disco dance, a fashionable metropolitan cultural form at the time, as less attractive than the motions of a policeman directing traffic in her neighborhood. She sings the then-popular Taiwanese melodrama theme song “Zuoye xingchen” 昨夜星辰 (“The Constellation Last Night”) so that it gradually devolves into a Pingju tune. And she never correctly pronounces the title of the “meaningful” ancient story about the literati, “Sima Guang za gang” 司 馬光砸缸 (“Sima Guang Breaking the Jar”),13 whereas she is quite familiar with “superstitious” folk ghost stories and fairy stories.

Puns are also a ubiquitous element in the xiaopin shows as they appear in the Gala. Punning is one of the forms of what Bakhtin calls grammatica jocosa, which, as Peter Stallybrass and Allon White explain, is a form of locution where “grammatical order is transgressed to reveal erotic and obscene or merely materially satisfying counter-meaning.”14 They further cite Arthur’s argument on the punning in Bakhtinian style:

[The pun] violates and so unveils the structure of prevailing (pre- vailing) convention; and it provokes laughter. Samuel Beckett’s punning pronouncement “In the beginning was the Pun” sets the pun against official Word and at the same time, as puns often do, sets free a chain of other puns. So, too, carnival sets itself up in a punning relationship with official culture and enables a plural, unfixed, comic view of the world.15

13 The ancient story of “Sima Guang za gang” tells how the young Sima Guang of the Song dynasty saved a fellow

child who had fallen into a big jar, filled with water, by bravely breaking the jar with a stone.

14 Peter Stallybrass, and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

1986), 10-11.

15 Ibid., 11.

112 113

The sketch “A Day in the Life of the Hero’s Mother” makes frequent use of punning. For example, Hou’s identity as a daoyan 導演 (director), a prestigious job title, is degraded by Zhao as daoye 倒爺, a derogatory word for blackmarketeer/profiteer. The same holds true for punning on the abstract professional jargon-word gousi 構思 (conception) with the word for the concrete, everyday food doufusi 豆腐絲 (sliced tofu), on jikuair 幾塊兒 (several episodes) with jikuair 幾塊兒 (several chunks of tofu), and on xiayige danyuan 下一個單元 (the next unit of camera shots) with xiayige danyuan 下一個單元 (a downstairs unit of a building), and so forth.

From a sociological perspective, Wang Liejun is quick to point out that the model-setup is a technique of power control prevalently both in society generally as well as in the yearly Gala.16 The “Parody of the Lofty Model” in the sketch “A Day in the Life of the Hero’s Mother,” when compared with the dominant “model-setup” form exalted in other shows in the Gala, can be seen to serve as a necessary lever of power rather than as an instance of resistance to it. Such sketches are arguably an alternative technique of power control devised by the state media, thus helping to form a “compromise equilibrium” in the Gramscian sense, where the power exercised by dominant groups operates through subtle and complex negotiations and compromises rather than through explicit domination of, or direct conflict with, subordinate groups.17 In this light, both Du Wenwei and Zhao Bin only partially make sense of the legitimatization of xiaopin in the state- sanctioned Gala. While Du attributes the popularity of xiaopin exclusively to its critical potential for lampooning the commercial ethos in the market economy,18 Zhao goes to the other extreme by arguing that xiaopin, as the most popular form of entertainment, is made to convey effectively the packaged official propaganda.19 Nevertheless, all three authors fail to identify the traditional folk culture in which xiaopin is implicitly grounded, and thus they are unable to fully comprehend how the dominant ideology legitimizes itself by staging folk forms in the major cultural productions of the modern broadcast media, such as the CCTV Gala. It is true that the various folk forms (folk opera and ballads, folk songs, as well as the folk performing arts integrated in the comic sketches) are a way for the Gala to establish continuity with the traditional festive celebrations, and it is equally true that these premodern, preindustrial folk entertainment forms have been increasingly threatened and marginalized by the modern, industrial, popular forms of entertainment such as television. In this way, by staging, recognizing, and even possibly valorizing the folk forms in the CCTV Gala, the most prestigious cultural spectacle of the mainstream media, the state and the mainstream society alike seem to convey a cultural message that no valuable cultural heritage has been sacrificed, victimized, or will perish in China’s modernizing process. At the

16 Wang, “Guanxi shijiao xia de quanli shijian.”

17 John Storey, Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture, second edition (Athens: University of Georgia

Press, 2003).

18 Du Wenwei, “Xiaopin: Theatrical Skits as Both Creatures and Critics of Commercialism,” The China Quarterly

154 (Jun. 1998): 382-99.

19 Zhao Bin “Popular Family Television and Party Ideology: the Spring Festival Eve Happy Gathering,” Media,

Culture & Society 20.1 (1998): 43-58.

same time however, these authorities may not be aware that to inculcate the populace with any such ideological message is to employ a double-edged sword. The comic sketches embedded in the peasant folk performance art can simultaneously conform to and subvert the state ideology in an ambivalent and nuanced way, as Zhao Benshan’s comic sketches most clearly illustrate.

Zhao Benshan’s Comic Sketches and Northeast Errenzhuan

Ever since his first appearance in the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in 1990, Zhao’s sketch has become a perennial staple in the yearly Gala, ushering in a tradition of comic sketches delivered in Northeast Mandarin. Zhao Benshan is often claimed to be the key figure who transformed xiaopin from a training exercise used in metropolitan drama and film schools to a comic genre, charged with peasant folk performance art. His achievement in these sketches is inseparable from the Errenzhuan he and his long-time collaborators have grown up with. As his scriptwriter Cui Kai comments, the common characteristic of all of Zhao’s comic roles, encompassing various ages, genders, and personality types, is chou 丑 (ugly or grotesque), which is applicable to his appearance, language, or slapstick behavior.20 Choujue 丑角 is the comic role Zhao has long played in the local Errenzhuan troupe in his home village in North Liaoning. In Errenzhuan, Choujue is also called xiazhuang 下裝 (the lower dress), which is consistent with Bakhtin’s analysis of the clown’s grotesque body as “the lower bodily stratum.” By inverting the bodily hierarchy of spiritual upper functions and vulgar lower ones, the Choujue clown’s body image is ambivalent: destroying and generating, swallowing and being swallowed.21

For choujue or xiazhuang, the most characteristic part of his performance is shuokou 說口 (speaking), as opposed to singing, dancing, or acting. According to Wang Qiuying et al., there are at least ten interwoven types of shuokou delivered in the colloquial Northeast Mandarin, such as pingkou 平口 (strictly or loosely rhymed, toned in ping and ze), xiangsheng kou 相 聲口 (delivering the punch line of a joke), zhuakou/geda kou 抓口/疙瘩口 (spontaneous improvisation), and gushi kou 故事口 (short stories or jokes).22 As its main function is to evoke laughter, the language is often discredited as being vulgar, low, and dirty. Here is a typical excerpt from a traditional Errenzhuan work, Wang Meirong Guanhua 王美容觀花 (Wang Meirong

20 Li Shanyuan 李善遠, and Zhang Feifei 張非非, “Gei yiwan guanzhong dailai xiaosheng de yishujia: ping

Zhao Benshan de xiju xiaopin” 給億萬觀眾帶來笑聲的藝術家：評趙本山的喜劇小品 [“The Performer

Who Has Brought Laughter to Millions of Audience: Comments on Zhao Benshan’s Comic Sketches”], Renmin

fayuan bao 人民法院報 [People’s Court Newspaper] (Oct. 12, 2002).

21 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 163.

22 Wang Qiuying, et al. 王秋影等, “Lüetan dongbei errenzhuan biaoyan yishu” 略談東北二人轉表演藝術

[“A Discussion of the Performing Arts in Northeast Errenzhuan”], Errenzhuan yanjiu ziliao 二人轉研究資料

[Research Materials on Errenzhuan], ed. Zhongguo quyi gongzuozhe xiehui jilin fenhui 中國曲藝工作者協會

吉林分會 [Jilin Branch of China’s Folk Artists Association] 1 (1979): 73.

112 113

The sketch “A Day in the Life of the Hero’s Mother” makes frequent use of punning. For example, Hou’s identity as a daoyan 導演 (director), a prestigious job title, is degraded by Zhao as daoye 倒爺, a derogatory word for blackmarketeer/profiteer. The same holds true for punning on the abstract professional jargon-word gousi 構思 (conception) with the word for the concrete, everyday food doufusi 豆腐絲 (sliced tofu), on jikuair 幾塊兒 (several episodes) with jikuair 幾塊兒 (several chunks of tofu), and on xiayige danyuan 下一個單元 (the next unit of camera shots) with xiayige danyuan 下一個單元 (a downstairs unit of a building), and so forth.

From a sociological perspective, Wang Liejun is quick to point out that the model-setup is a technique of power control prevalently both in society generally as well as in the yearly Gala.16 The “Parody of the Lofty Model” in the sketch “A Day in the Life of the Hero’s Mother,” when compared with the dominant “model-setup” form exalted in other shows in the Gala, can be seen to serve as a necessary lever of power rather than as an instance of resistance to it. Such sketches are arguably an alternative technique of power control devised by the state media, thus helping to form a “compromise equilibrium” in the Gramscian sense, where the power exercised by dominant groups operates through subtle and complex negotiations and compromises rather than through explicit domination of, or direct conflict with, subordinate groups.17 In this light, both Du Wenwei and Zhao Bin only partially make sense of the legitimatization of xiaopin in the state- sanctioned Gala. While Du attributes the popularity of xiaopin exclusively to its critical potential for lampooning the commercial ethos in the market economy,18 Zhao goes to the other extreme by arguing that xiaopin, as the most popular form of entertainment, is made to convey effectively the packaged official propaganda.19 Nevertheless, all three authors fail to identify the traditional folk culture in which xiaopin is implicitly grounded, and thus they are unable to fully comprehend how the dominant ideology legitimizes itself by staging folk forms in the major cultural productions of the modern broadcast media, such as the CCTV Gala. It is true that the various folk forms (folk opera and ballads, folk songs, as well as the folk performing arts integrated in the comic sketches) are a way for the Gala to establish continuity with the traditional festive celebrations, and it is equally true that these premodern, preindustrial folk entertainment forms have been increasingly threatened and marginalized by the modern, industrial, popular forms of entertainment such as television. In this way, by staging, recognizing, and even possibly valorizing the folk forms in the CCTV Gala, the most prestigious cultural spectacle of the mainstream media, the state and the mainstream society alike seem to convey a cultural message that no valuable cultural heritage has been sacrificed, victimized, or will perish in China’s modernizing process. At the

16 Wang, “Guanxi shijiao xia de quanli shijian.”

17 John Storey, Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture, second edition (Athens: University of Georgia

Press, 2003).

18 Du Wenwei, “Xiaopin: Theatrical Skits as Both Creatures and Critics of Commercialism,” The China Quarterly

154 (Jun. 1998): 382-99.

19 Zhao Bin “Popular Family Television and Party Ideology: the Spring Festival Eve Happy Gathering,” Media,

Culture & Society 20.1 (1998): 43-58.

same time however, these authorities may not be aware that to inculcate the populace with any such ideological message is to employ a double-edged sword. The comic sketches embedded in the peasant folk performance art can simultaneously conform to and subvert the state ideology in an ambivalent and nuanced way, as Zhao Benshan’s comic sketches most clearly illustrate.

Zhao Benshan’s Comic Sketches and Northeast Errenzhuan

Ever since his first appearance in the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in 1990, Zhao’s sketch has become a perennial staple in the yearly Gala, ushering in a tradition of comic sketches delivered in Northeast Mandarin. Zhao Benshan is often claimed to be the key figure who transformed xiaopin from a training exercise used in metropolitan drama and film schools to a comic genre, charged with peasant folk performance art. His achievement in these sketches is inseparable from the Errenzhuan he and his long-time collaborators have grown up with. As his scriptwriter Cui Kai comments, the common characteristic of all of Zhao’s comic roles, encompassing various ages, genders, and personality types, is chou 丑 (ugly or grotesque), which is applicable to his appearance, language, or slapstick behavior.20 Choujue 丑角 is the comic role Zhao has long played in the local Errenzhuan troupe in his home village in North Liaoning. In Errenzhuan, Choujue is also called xiazhuang 下裝 (the lower dress), which is consistent with Bakhtin’s analysis of the clown’s grotesque body as “the lower bodily stratum.” By inverting the bodily hierarchy of spiritual upper functions and vulgar lower ones, the Choujue clown’s body image is ambivalent: destroying and generating, swallowing and being swallowed.21

For choujue or xiazhuang, the most characteristic part of his performance is shuokou 說口 (speaking), as opposed to singing, dancing, or acting. According to Wang Qiuying et al., there are at least ten interwoven types of shuokou delivered in the colloquial Northeast Mandarin, such as pingkou 平口 (strictly or loosely rhymed, toned in ping and ze), xiangsheng kou 相 聲口 (delivering the punch line of a joke), zhuakou/geda kou 抓口/疙瘩口 (spontaneous improvisation), and gushi kou 故事口 (short stories or jokes).22 As its main function is to evoke laughter, the language is often discredited as being vulgar, low, and dirty. Here is a typical excerpt from a traditional Errenzhuan work, Wang Meirong Guanhua 王美容觀花 (Wang Meirong

20 Li Shanyuan 李善遠, and Zhang Feifei 張非非, “Gei yiwan guanzhong dailai xiaosheng de yishujia: ping

Zhao Benshan de xiju xiaopin” 給億萬觀眾帶來笑聲的藝術家：評趙本山的喜劇小品 [“The Performer

Who Has Brought Laughter to Millions of Audience: Comments on Zhao Benshan’s Comic Sketches”], Renmin

fayuan bao 人民法院報 [People’s Court Newspaper] (Oct. 12, 2002).

21 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 163.

22 Wang Qiuying, et al. 王秋影等, “Lüetan dongbei errenzhuan biaoyan yishu” 略談東北二人轉表演藝術

[“A Discussion of the Performing Arts in Northeast Errenzhuan”], Errenzhuan yanjiu ziliao 二人轉研究資料

[Research Materials on Errenzhuan], ed. Zhongguo quyi gongzuozhe xiehui jilin fenhui 中國曲藝工作者協會

吉林分會 [Jilin Branch of China’s Folk Artists Association] 1 (1979): 73.

114 115

Enjoys the Flowers), as cited in Ma Qiufen.23 Wang speaks to herself when meeting her future husband, Mr. Right:

A newlywed couple sleeps in the quilt. One leg—a mushroom root; two legs—Dominique Hen; three legs—a tripod griddle; four legs—a table for eating; face to face—a small mirror; mouth to mouth—a long- stemmed pipe’s mouth; leg intertwined with leg—twisted fried dough.

被窩裏睡新人兒，一條腿兒，蘑菇根兒；兩條腿兒，蘆花雞

兒；三條腿兒，煎餅鏊子兒；四條腿兒，飯桌子兒；臉對臉兒，

是小鏡子兒；嘴對嘴兒，是煙袋鍋子兒；腿摽腿兒，那是麻花子

兒。

The humor arises from a series of witty, rhymed metaphors made between erotic sexuality and familiar objects of rural life. The folk, unofficial laughter is evoked, not only because it strongly emphasizes the bodily, material level of food, drink, digestion, and sexual life, but also because of an ambiguous, plural, comic world the double-voiced utterances reveal.

Zhao’s dialogues in the sketches are rooted in the folk art tradition of Errenzhuan, and especially in the colloquial speech art of shuokou. In a series of sketches since 1990, Zhao has successfully set up a number of comic scenarios featuring the speech styles of niangen 蔫哏. Niangen could be translated as “cold humor.” Nian describes somebody who appears honest and speaks sparingly, and gen means a punch line. Niangen has been hailed as the highest achievement of the shuokou art, where intonation is paramount. The music critic Li Wan highly praises the resourcefulness of intonation in Errenzhuan.24 The various intonation patterns within the same wording create a mood of paradox, through which an ambiguous clarity emerges. He further points out that the distinctive feature of this local art form is biaoqing 表情 (emotive- affective) instead of biaoyi 表義 (semantic-referential), insofar as the meaning is expressed not in the content but in the form of intonation. Li’s observation echoes Volosinov’s argument25 that intonation makes the word it attaches to “virtually empty semantically.”26 From a more

23 Ma Qiufen 馬秋芬, Dao dongbei kan Errenzhuan 到東北看二人轉 [Errenzhuan in Northeast China] (Wuhan:

Hubei meishu chubanshe, 2003), 107.

24 Li Wan 李皖 , “Nan huo nü, errenzhuan he yaogun” 男或女，二人轉和搖滾 [“Man or Woman, Errenzhuan,

and Rock Music”], Beifang yinyue 北方音樂 [Northern Music] 1 (2005): 39.

25 Liu Kang in his Duihua de xuansheng mentions the dispute over the authorship of this article and of Volosinov,

see V.N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1986). No matter who the real author is, Volosinov or Bakhtin, we should note the fact that both worked closely

in the Leningrad Group and that therefore their ideas would have possessed important affinities.

26 V.N. Volosinov, “Discourse in Life and Discourse in Art (Concerning Sociological Poetics),” Freudianism: a

Marxist Critique, trans. I. R. Titunik (New York: Academic Press, 1976), 102.

theoretical perspective, Volosinov elaborates on the social nature of intonation. He argues that a different treatment of intonation is the key distinction between discourse in art and discourse in life, though both discourses remain dependent on their direct contexts to varying degrees. In the extraverbal context, intonation “always lies on the border of the verbal and the nonverbal, the said and the unsaid,”27 therefore exhibiting “the greatest sensitivity, elasticity, and freedom”28 when compared with other factors of verbal utterances.

Zhao Benshan is a master of such intonation.29 Most of his catchy lines are registered with unique, expressive intonation. In the sketch “Xiang qin” 相親 (“Blind Date,” 1990) scripted by Zhang Chao, although most of his dialogue is muffled, conveying shyness or uneasiness, his forceful, emotion-charged articulation rhymed with ao “just let you young people dance and jump, kiss and hug, so the elderly are left to be lonely?” 就興你們年輕人連蹦帶跳又摟又抱, 我們老年人就只能乾靠? highlights the social issue of remarriage among the elderly at the time. In the sequel “Laonian wanhun” 老蔫完婚 (“Laonian Getting Married,” 1991) scripted by Zhang Chao and Zhang Huizhong, Zhao parodies the Cantonese accent of his peasant fiancée, who has changed considerably following several months’ stay in Shenzhen. In order to test her love, Zhao feminizes his voice and plays an elderly woman engaging her in conversion.30 In the “Lao bainian” 老拜年 (“The Elders Pay a New Year’s Call,” 1993) scripted by Cui Kai and Zhang Chao, since the traditional opera troupe has been marginalized in the booming modern market economy, the Errenzhuan master Zhao has to pay a New Year’s call on his former students- turned-entrepreneurs in order to find a job. As his line goes:

Our local opera troupe has become a Qigong training class; the rehearsal room has been rented to the peddlers; I’ve been pushed aside, and for me EVERY DAY IS A SUNDAY, SEVEN DAYS A WEEK.

咱們那個地方戲團辦成氣功訓練班兒了，排練場租給小商小

販兒賣貨擺攤兒了，把我這副科級給我擠兌靠邊兒了，整得我一

周七天全是禮拜天兒了。

The intonation epitomizes the style of niangen, that is, puping dianwen jiedexiang 鋪平

27 Ibid., 102.

28 Ibid., 105.

29 As the term “intonation” is interpreted here as “emotion-charged” or “emotive-affective,” it should be clear that

this study uses a broad definition of intonation, which not only includes the melodic tone contour, as defined

in M.A. Halliday, An Introduction to Functional Grammar (London: E. Arnold, 1994), 9, but also other vocal

factors such as rhythm and variation in tempo and loudness.

30 Double-gender acting is characteristic of Errenzhuan performance. In contrast to cross-gender acting, for instance,

the female role played by Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳 in the Beijing Opera, the person playing a double-gender role in

Errenzhuan art can be easily identified as a man who acts like a woman.

114 115

Enjoys the Flowers), as cited in Ma Qiufen.23 Wang speaks to herself when meeting her future husband, Mr. Right:

A newlywed couple sleeps in the quilt. One leg—a mushroom root; two legs—Dominique Hen; three legs—a tripod griddle; four legs—a table for eating; face to face—a small mirror; mouth to mouth—a long- stemmed pipe’s mouth; leg intertwined with leg—twisted fried dough.

被窩裏睡新人兒，一條腿兒，蘑菇根兒；兩條腿兒，蘆花雞

兒；三條腿兒，煎餅鏊子兒；四條腿兒，飯桌子兒；臉對臉兒，

是小鏡子兒；嘴對嘴兒，是煙袋鍋子兒；腿摽腿兒，那是麻花子

兒。

The humor arises from a series of witty, rhymed metaphors made between erotic sexuality and familiar objects of rural life. The folk, unofficial laughter is evoked, not only because it strongly emphasizes the bodily, material level of food, drink, digestion, and sexual life, but also because of an ambiguous, plural, comic world the double-voiced utterances reveal.

Zhao’s dialogues in the sketches are rooted in the folk art tradition of Errenzhuan, and especially in the colloquial speech art of shuokou. In a series of sketches since 1990, Zhao has successfully set up a number of comic scenarios featuring the speech styles of niangen 蔫哏. Niangen could be translated as “cold humor.” Nian describes somebody who appears honest and speaks sparingly, and gen means a punch line. Niangen has been hailed as the highest achievement of the shuokou art, where intonation is paramount. The music critic Li Wan highly praises the resourcefulness of intonation in Errenzhuan.24 The various intonation patterns within the same wording create a mood of paradox, through which an ambiguous clarity emerges. He further points out that the distinctive feature of this local art form is biaoqing 表情 (emotive- affective) instead of biaoyi 表義 (semantic-referential), insofar as the meaning is expressed not in the content but in the form of intonation. Li’s observation echoes Volosinov’s argument25 that intonation makes the word it attaches to “virtually empty semantically.”26 From a more

23 Ma Qiufen 馬秋芬 , Dao dongbei kan Errenzhuan 到東北看二人轉 [Errenzhuan in Northeast China] (Wuhan:

Hubei meishu chubanshe, 2003), 107.

24 Li Wan 李皖, “Nan huo nü, errenzhuan he yaogun” 男或女，二人轉和搖滾 [“Man or Woman, Errenzhuan,

and Rock Music”], Beifang yinyue 北方音樂 [Northern Music] 1 (2005): 39.

25 Liu Kang in his Duihua de xuansheng mentions the dispute over the authorship of this article and of Volosinov,

see V.N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1986). No matter who the real author is, Volosinov or Bakhtin, we should note the fact that both worked closely

in the Leningrad Group and that therefore their ideas would have possessed important affinities.

26 V.N. Volosinov, “Discourse in Life and Discourse in Art (Concerning Sociological Poetics),” Freudianism: a

Marxist Critique, trans. I. R. Titunik (New York: Academic Press, 1976), 102.

theoretical perspective, Volosinov elaborates on the social nature of intonation. He argues that a different treatment of intonation is the key distinction between discourse in art and discourse in life, though both discourses remain dependent on their direct contexts to varying degrees. In the extraverbal context, intonation “always lies on the border of the verbal and the nonverbal, the said and the unsaid,”27 therefore exhibiting “the greatest sensitivity, elasticity, and freedom”28 when compared with other factors of verbal utterances.

Zhao Benshan is a master of such intonation.29 Most of his catchy lines are registered with unique, expressive intonation. In the sketch “Xiang qin” 相親 (“Blind Date,” 1990) scripted by Zhang Chao, although most of his dialogue is muffled, conveying shyness or uneasiness, his forceful, emotion-charged articulation rhymed with ao “just let you young people dance and jump, kiss and hug, so the elderly are left to be lonely?” 就興你們年輕人連蹦帶跳又摟又抱, 我們老年人就只能乾靠? highlights the social issue of remarriage among the elderly at the time. In the sequel “Laonian wanhun” 老蔫完婚 (“Laonian Getting Married,” 1991) scripted by Zhang Chao and Zhang Huizhong, Zhao parodies the Cantonese accent of his peasant fiancée, who has changed considerably following several months’ stay in Shenzhen. In order to test her love, Zhao feminizes his voice and plays an elderly woman engaging her in conversion.30 In the “Lao bainian” 老拜年 (“The Elders Pay a New Year’s Call,” 1993) scripted by Cui Kai and Zhang Chao, since the traditional opera troupe has been marginalized in the booming modern market economy, the Errenzhuan master Zhao has to pay a New Year’s call on his former students- turned-entrepreneurs in order to find a job. As his line goes:

Our local opera troupe has become a Qigong training class; the rehearsal room has been rented to the peddlers; I’ve been pushed aside, and for me EVERY DAY IS A SUNDAY, SEVEN DAYS A WEEK.

咱們那個地方戲團辦成氣功訓練班兒了，排練場租給小商小

販兒賣貨擺攤兒了，把我這副科級給我擠兌靠邊兒了，整得我一

周七天全是禮拜天兒了。

The intonation epitomizes the style of niangen, that is, puping dianwen jiedexiang 鋪平

27 Ibid., 102.

28 Ibid., 105.

29 As the term “intonation” is interpreted here as “emotion-charged” or “emotive-affective,” it should be clear that

this study uses a broad definition of intonation, which not only includes the melodic tone contour, as defined

in M.A. Halliday, An Introduction to Functional Grammar (London: E. Arnold, 1994), 9, but also other vocal

factors such as rhythm and variation in tempo and loudness.

30 Double-gender acting is characteristic of Errenzhuan performance. In contrast to cross-gender acting, for instance,

the female role played by Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳 in the Beijing Opera, the person playing a double-gender role in

Errenzhuan art can be easily identified as a man who acts like a woman.

116 117

墊穩揭得響 (a controlled foreshadowing leads to a more effective climax). In “Honggaoliang Mote Dui” 紅高粱模特隊 (“Red Sorghum Fashion Model Group,” 1997) scripted by Cui Kai and He Qingkui, Zhao makes a hilarious analogy out of “hidden similarities”31 between modern model training and rural insecticide spraying:

To push your belly in is to cinch up your belt; to lift your hip is to buckle on the spray box; to cast a sidelong glance is to look towards the fruit tree; while pumping direct the spray. The beat is like this: yi ci ci/ er ci ci/san ci ci/si ci ci [the sound of spraying in the rhythm of Viennese Waltz, ¾ time].

收腹，是勒緊小肚子；提臀，是要把藥箱卡住；斜視，是看

準果樹；這邊加壓，這邊就噴霧。它的節拍是這樣的：一刺刺，

二刺刺，三刺刺，四刺刺。

In “Bainian” 拜年 (“Paying a New Year’s Call”) scripted by He Qingkui and Zhang Qingdong, Zhao stammers when he suddenly realizes the xiangzhang 鄉長 (town leader), a distant cousin whom he had assumed to have been dismissed, allegedly due to corruption, has actually been promoted to the higher position of xianzhang 縣長 (county magistrate). Zhao’s stammering exemplifies the Freudian “mechanism of a slip of the tongue,”32 the suspension of a previous intention as a result of a series of socially hierarchical reversals: the family hierarchy of filial piety between Zhao and his cousin, temporarily rescued from the hierarchical political repression that separates common villagers and the xiangzhang, is repressed again by a stauncher political hierarchy between common villagers and the xianzhang.

There are other examples of intonation alone being self-sufficient and meaningful. In “Niu dashu tigan” 牛大叔提幹 (“Uncle Niu Promoted,” 1995), scripted by Cui Kai, Zhao plays Uncle Niu, who is sent by a poverty-stricken village school to a local government-sponsored company seeking some funding. He is temporarily “promoted” to fill in for the company manager who has been hospitalized because of a stomach problem stemming from endlessly attending business banquets. Preparing prior to the guests’ arrival, Uncle Niu practices a toast, reading a text written by the manager’s secretary. But what the audience hears is just a stream of toned utterance except for some filtered words: “zhe ge… a, wo shuo… a” 這個……啊，我說……啊 (“well… a, I say… a”). If taken in isolation, the intonation itself would be empty and unintelligible. But here in the extraverbal context, the audience bursts into laughter hearing the illiterate Uncle Niu

31 A favorite definition of joking has long been that it involves a statement that reveals the similarity between

dissimilar things, that is, hidden similarities. Jean Paul expresses this definition in a joking form: “joking is the

disguised priest who weds every couple.” Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (New

York, Norton, 1960), 11.

32 Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (Garden City: Garden City Pub. Co., 1935), 30-47.

parodying the stereotyped, tedious, and overbearing tonal speech pattern of Party cadres and officials. The politically and culturally inferior addressee’s rendition of the superior addresser’s intonation becomes a meaningful locution because of the performer’s and the audience’s shared “knowledge and social evaluation of the situation.”33 What is said is determined by what is unsaid; at the same time, what is said anticipates what is unsaid. As a whole, the sketch satirizes the social ills of excessive dining-out on public funds. This turns out to be in conformity with the national anticorruption movement, an effort undertaken by the Zhu Rongji regime at the time. Therefore, one may argue that the intention of Zhao’s sketches is dual: to dissolve authority through satire, and at the same time to gain proximity to authority. Nevertheless, neither the conforming nor the subversive voices are explicit; both are imbued with ambiguity and indeterminacy, as a close reading of the following sketch will demonstrate.

The sketch “Zuotian, jintian, mingtian” 昨天 今天 明天 (“Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” 1999), scripted by He Qingkui, is about an elderly Northeast rural couple who come to the then- hit CCTV talk show “Shihua shishuo” 實話實說 (“To Tell the Truth”). The sketch sets up a hierarchical opposition between the host in the center and the couple in the periphery right from the beginning. The host, with the name Cui Yongyuan 崔永元, speaking Putonghua, is a real television celebrity hosting the show in the state station in Beijing. The rural couple, Dashu 大 叔 (played by Zhao Benshan) and Dama 大媽 (played by Song Dandan), speaking the Northeast dialect, are nameless members of the folk mass from the Northeast region, the “guests” who are notified to come to the official realm to which they do not really belong. Yet soon the hierarchy between the central, official discourse and the peripheral, folk discourse is reversed:

Cui: The topic of today’s talk show is “yesterday, today, and tomorrow.” This time, we’ll change our rules and have Dashu talk first.

Zhao: We prepared at home last night, came over here today, and will go back tomorrow. Thanks.

Cui: No, no. Dashu. I didn’t mean for you to talk about “yesterday.” I was hoping you’d talk about something even earlier [than yesterday].

Song: The day before yesterday? We got the notification from the xiang government [to come to the show] the day before yesterday. Thanks!

Cui (becoming a little anxious): Dashu and Dama, the “yesterday, today, and tomorrow” I was talking about is not “yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”

Zhao: The day after tomorrow? Cui: Not the day after tomorrow. Song (puzzled): Then which day do you mean?

33 Volosinov, “Discourse in Life and Discourse in Art,” 99.

116 117

墊穩揭得響 (a controlled foreshadowing leads to a more effective climax). In “Honggaoliang Mote Dui” 紅高粱模特隊 (“Red Sorghum Fashion Model Group,” 1997) scripted by Cui Kai and He Qingkui, Zhao makes a hilarious analogy out of “hidden similarities”31 between modern model training and rural insecticide spraying:

To push your belly in is to cinch up your belt; to lift your hip is to buckle on the spray box; to cast a sidelong glance is to look towards the fruit tree; while pumping direct the spray. The beat is like this: yi ci ci/ er ci ci/san ci ci/si ci ci [the sound of spraying in the rhythm of Viennese Waltz, ¾ time].

收腹，是勒緊小肚子；提臀，是要把藥箱卡住；斜視，是看

準果樹；這邊加壓，這邊就噴霧。它的節拍是這樣的：一刺刺，

二刺刺，三刺刺，四刺刺。

In “Bainian” 拜年 (“Paying a New Year’s Call”) scripted by He Qingkui and Zhang Qingdong, Zhao stammers when he suddenly realizes the xiangzhang 鄉長 (town leader), a distant cousin whom he had assumed to have been dismissed, allegedly due to corruption, has actually been promoted to the higher position of xianzhang 縣長 (county magistrate). Zhao’s stammering exemplifies the Freudian “mechanism of a slip of the tongue,”32 the suspension of a previous intention as a result of a series of socially hierarchical reversals: the family hierarchy of filial piety between Zhao and his cousin, temporarily rescued from the hierarchical political repression that separates common villagers and the xiangzhang, is repressed again by a stauncher political hierarchy between common villagers and the xianzhang.

There are other examples of intonation alone being self-sufficient and meaningful. In “Niu dashu tigan” 牛大叔提幹 (“Uncle Niu Promoted,” 1995), scripted by Cui Kai, Zhao plays Uncle Niu, who is sent by a poverty-stricken village school to a local government-sponsored company seeking some funding. He is temporarily “promoted” to fill in for the company manager who has been hospitalized because of a stomach problem stemming from endlessly attending business banquets. Preparing prior to the guests’ arrival, Uncle Niu practices a toast, reading a text written by the manager’s secretary. But what the audience hears is just a stream of toned utterance except for some filtered words: “zhe ge… a, wo shuo… a” 這個……啊，我說……啊 (“well… a, I say… a”). If taken in isolation, the intonation itself would be empty and unintelligible. But here in the extraverbal context, the audience bursts into laughter hearing the illiterate Uncle Niu

31 A favorite definition of joking has long been that it involves a statement that reveals the similarity between

dissimilar things, that is, hidden similarities. Jean Paul expresses this definition in a joking form: “joking is the

disguised priest who weds every couple.” Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (New

York, Norton, 1960), 11.

32 Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (Garden City: Garden City Pub. Co., 1935), 30-47.

parodying the stereotyped, tedious, and overbearing tonal speech pattern of Party cadres and officials. The politically and culturally inferior addressee’s rendition of the superior addresser’s intonation becomes a meaningful locution because of the performer’s and the audience’s shared “knowledge and social evaluation of the situation.”33 What is said is determined by what is unsaid; at the same time, what is said anticipates what is unsaid. As a whole, the sketch satirizes the social ills of excessive dining-out on public funds. This turns out to be in conformity with the national anticorruption movement, an effort undertaken by the Zhu Rongji regime at the time. Therefore, one may argue that the intention of Zhao’s sketches is dual: to dissolve authority through satire, and at the same time to gain proximity to authority. Nevertheless, neither the conforming nor the subversive voices are explicit; both are imbued with ambiguity and indeterminacy, as a close reading of the following sketch will demonstrate.

The sketch “Zuotian, jintian, mingtian” 昨天 今天 明天 (“Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” 1999), scripted by He Qingkui, is about an elderly Northeast rural couple who come to the then- hit CCTV talk show “Shihua shishuo” 實話實說 (“To Tell the Truth”). The sketch sets up a hierarchical opposition between the host in the center and the couple in the periphery right from the beginning. The host, with the name Cui Yongyuan 崔永元, speaking Putonghua, is a real television celebrity hosting the show in the state station in Beijing. The rural couple, Dashu 大 叔 (played by Zhao Benshan) and Dama 大媽 (played by Song Dandan), speaking the Northeast dialect, are nameless members of the folk mass from the Northeast region, the “guests” who are notified to come to the official realm to which they do not really belong. Yet soon the hierarchy between the central, official discourse and the peripheral, folk discourse is reversed:

Cui: The topic of today’s talk show is “yesterday, today, and tomorrow.” This time, we’ll change our rules and have Dashu talk first.

Zhao: We prepared at home last night, came over here today, and will go back tomorrow. Thanks.

Cui: No, no. Dashu. I didn’t mean for you to talk about “yesterday.” I was hoping you’d talk about something even earlier [than yesterday].

Song: The day before yesterday? We got the notification from the xiang government [to come to the show] the day before yesterday. Thanks!

Cui (becoming a little anxious): Dashu and Dama, the “yesterday, today, and tomorrow” I was talking about is not “yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”

Zhao: The day after tomorrow? Cui: Not the day after tomorrow. Song (puzzled): Then which day do you mean?

33 Volosinov, “Discourse in Life and Discourse in Art,” 99.

118 119

Cui: Not a specific day. What I meant is to ask you to recall the past, comment on the present, and then look into the future.

Zhao: Aha! Then that’s “the past, the present, and the future.” Song (echoes Zhao): That’s not the same thing as “yesterday,

today, and tomorrow.” Zhao (speaks to Cui): yeah, the way you asked was a little

problematic. Song (echoes again): No one asked this way. Zhao: Exactly. Cui (shaking his head): Well. Seems to be my fault?

For the host, his interpretation of the phrase “yesterday, today, and tomorrow” is uni- accentual, excluding the original, basic meaning of the phrase and fixating on its extended meaning as “the past, the present, and the future.” Implicit in this phrase, in its official interpretation, is another typical Party formula of class education dating from the Maoist era, Yikusitian 憶苦思

甜: to recall the bitterness of the past (in the old society) and to savor the sweetness of the present (in the new society). The audience, long inculcated with Party ideology, found the couple’s retrieved meaning of the phrase to be unexpected and unanticipated. This is what lies behind the carnivalesque laughter, not only does folk discourse restore the familiarity, originality, and multi- accentuality of language, but also official discourse becomes aware of its own limitations or flaws only when confronted with folk discourse.

Nevertheless, once the couple figures out what the official intention is, their utterance soon seems to conform to the mode of Yikusitian. As Zhao passionately reads:

Dear leaders and comrades. … Good evening. The year 1998 was an unusual year. A bumper crop harvested, a flood repelled. The people live and work in peace and contentment. [We] all praise the unexcelled Party leadership. It’s especially hard to find a better army in the world than the PLA; other countries are such a mess, daily plotting against each other. Today their cabinet resigns, tomorrow their prime minister ousted [in Japan]. The Financial Crisis [in East Asia], presidential impeachment [in the U.S.], one after another. To have a bird’s eye view of the world, the best scenery is here! Thanks a lot! [The original monologue rhymes in ao]

Here, apparently, the Party achievement in the past year is exalted by Zhao’s rhymed

accumulation of “comparatives and superlatives.” Wang Xiaokun thus argues that the essence of Zhao’s sketches is the unity found in diversity.34 His various comic images are in fact consistently

34 Wang Xiaokun 王孝坤, “Zhongguo xianshi wenhua xuanze yu fazhan zhuangkuang de yinyu: Zhao Benshan

a transmission of the official discourse in the center from a peasant position in the periphery, a rhetorical strategy from below to attempt to render, interpret, and illustrate the state ideology disseminated from above. However, it is important to note that Zhao reads the whole passage from a notebook. Reading from a text rather than speaking spontaneously is the standardized form of transmitting an official message. This is what Volosinov terms “direct discourse” or the “referent-analyzing modification of the indirect discourse,” which is “somewhat rationalistic and dogmatic in nature.”35 As Zhao reads the utterance that “belongs to someone else,”36 and here, belongs to the Party or the state, he transmits only passively an ideology that he may not have internalized very well. Such literal or mechanical transmission in turn testifies to the official discourse being a finished, fixed, inert, and immutable one.

A new twist emerges. Immediately following Zhao’s utterance of “Dear leaders and comrades,” the host dismissively comments, “You want to give a report?” It seems that this form of transmitting the Party voice is not quite favored by the authorities or the state media itself. In order to adjust the couple to the shifting role of the media, the host Cui is ready to borrow the language of ordinary folk. He guides the talk this way, “Dashu and Dama. The talk show is for talking, chatting, or shooting the breeze. Just like you Northeast people chatting 嘮嗑兒 (laoker) on the kang 炕 (a northern brick kiln-like bed). How are things at home, how are things going here.”

Once having converted the public official space into the private intimate space channeled by the host, the couple freely unleash a torrent of backhanded compliments, addressing Cui’s popularity in their village: “The people in our village really like you… Everyone praises you, saying you do a great job in hosting, except that you could be a little handsomer.” Song’s utterance is immediately followed by Zhao’s: “Your show is everyone’s favorite in our village. Your hosting style is unique. When you’re laughing, it looks like you’re crying. And when you’re crying, it looks like you’re laughing.” The simultaneous praise and abuse is characteristic of folk language, of which Bakhtin comments: “the praise is ironic and ambivalent. It is on the brink of abuse; the one leads to the other, and it is impossible to draw a line between them.”37

Such folk language abounds when the couple begins to chat about their past love story, their present personal life of idol worship, and their future plan of writing books and traveling. The couple’s heteroglot speech style showcases the Bakhtinian internal stratification within one language, Northeast Mandarin: abusive language (abusive praise or praiseful abuse), such as xiebazi lian 鞋拔子臉, zhuyaozi lian 豬腰子臉, kechen 坷磣 (three local derogatory idioms for one’s appearance) and baxia 扒瞎 (talk nonsense); puns, such as the literary idiom ansongqiubo

yingshi wenhua xianxiang de wenhua shixue jiedu yu sikao” 中國現實文化選擇與發展狀況的隱喻——趙

本山影視文化現象的文化詩學解讀與思考 [“Metaphor of the Realistic Cultural Choice and Development:

Thoughts on Zhao Benshan Phenomenon”], Juzuojia 劇作家 2 (2005): 71-75.

35 Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, 130.

36 Ibid., 116.

37 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 165.

118 119

Cui: Not a specific day. What I meant is to ask you to recall the past, comment on the present, and then look into the future.

Zhao: Aha! Then that’s “the past, the present, and the future.” Song (echoes Zhao): That’s not the same thing as “yesterday,

today, and tomorrow.” Zhao (speaks to Cui): yeah, the way you asked was a little

problematic. Song (echoes again): No one asked this way. Zhao: Exactly. Cui (shaking his head): Well. Seems to be my fault?

For the host, his interpretation of the phrase “yesterday, today, and tomorrow” is uni- accentual, excluding the original, basic meaning of the phrase and fixating on its extended meaning as “the past, the present, and the future.” Implicit in this phrase, in its official interpretation, is another typical Party formula of class education dating from the Maoist era, Yikusitian 憶苦思

甜: to recall the bitterness of the past (in the old society) and to savor the sweetness of the present (in the new society). The audience, long inculcated with Party ideology, found the couple’s retrieved meaning of the phrase to be unexpected and unanticipated. This is what lies behind the carnivalesque laughter, not only does folk discourse restore the familiarity, originality, and multi- accentuality of language, but also official discourse becomes aware of its own limitations or flaws only when confronted with folk discourse.

Nevertheless, once the couple figures out what the official intention is, their utterance soon seems to conform to the mode of Yikusitian. As Zhao passionately reads:

Dear leaders and comrades. … Good evening. The year 1998 was an unusual year. A bumper crop harvested, a flood repelled. The people live and work in peace and contentment. [We] all praise the unexcelled Party leadership. It’s especially hard to find a better army in the world than the PLA; other countries are such a mess, daily plotting against each other. Today their cabinet resigns, tomorrow their prime minister ousted [in Japan]. The Financial Crisis [in East Asia], presidential impeachment [in the U.S.], one after another. To have a bird’s eye view of the world, the best scenery is here! Thanks a lot! [The original monologue rhymes in ao]

Here, apparently, the Party achievement in the past year is exalted by Zhao’s rhymed

accumulation of “comparatives and superlatives.” Wang Xiaokun thus argues that the essence of Zhao’s sketches is the unity found in diversity.34 His various comic images are in fact consistently

34 Wang Xiaokun 王孝坤, “Zhongguo xianshi wenhua xuanze yu fazhan zhuangkuang de yinyu: Zhao Benshan

a transmission of the official discourse in the center from a peasant position in the periphery, a rhetorical strategy from below to attempt to render, interpret, and illustrate the state ideology disseminated from above. However, it is important to note that Zhao reads the whole passage from a notebook. Reading from a text rather than speaking spontaneously is the standardized form of transmitting an official message. This is what Volosinov terms “direct discourse” or the “referent-analyzing modification of the indirect discourse,” which is “somewhat rationalistic and dogmatic in nature.”35 As Zhao reads the utterance that “belongs to someone else,”36 and here, belongs to the Party or the state, he transmits only passively an ideology that he may not have internalized very well. Such literal or mechanical transmission in turn testifies to the official discourse being a finished, fixed, inert, and immutable one.

A new twist emerges. Immediately following Zhao’s utterance of “Dear leaders and comrades,” the host dismissively comments, “You want to give a report?” It seems that this form of transmitting the Party voice is not quite favored by the authorities or the state media itself. In order to adjust the couple to the shifting role of the media, the host Cui is ready to borrow the language of ordinary folk. He guides the talk this way, “Dashu and Dama. The talk show is for talking, chatting, or shooting the breeze. Just like you Northeast people chatting 嘮嗑兒 (laoker) on the kang 炕 (a northern brick kiln-like bed). How are things at home, how are things going here.”

Once having converted the public official space into the private intimate space channeled by the host, the couple freely unleash a torrent of backhanded compliments, addressing Cui’s popularity in their village: “The people in our village really like you… Everyone praises you, saying you do a great job in hosting, except that you could be a little handsomer.” Song’s utterance is immediately followed by Zhao’s: “Your show is everyone’s favorite in our village. Your hosting style is unique. When you’re laughing, it looks like you’re crying. And when you’re crying, it looks like you’re laughing.” The simultaneous praise and abuse is characteristic of folk language, of which Bakhtin comments: “the praise is ironic and ambivalent. It is on the brink of abuse; the one leads to the other, and it is impossible to draw a line between them.”37

Such folk language abounds when the couple begins to chat about their past love story, their present personal life of idol worship, and their future plan of writing books and traveling. The couple’s heteroglot speech style showcases the Bakhtinian internal stratification within one language, Northeast Mandarin: abusive language (abusive praise or praiseful abuse), such as xiebazi lian 鞋拔子臉, zhuyaozi lian 豬腰子臉, kechen 坷磣 (three local derogatory idioms for one’s appearance) and baxia 扒瞎 (talk nonsense); puns, such as the literary idiom ansongqiubo

yingshi wenhua xianxiang de wenhua shixue jiedu yu sikao” 中國現實文化選擇與發展狀況的隱喻——趙

本山影視文化現象的文化詩學解讀與思考 [“Metaphor of the Realistic Cultural Choice and Development:

Thoughts on Zhao Benshan Phenomenon”], Juzuojia 劇作家 2 (2005): 71-75.

35 Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, 130.

36 Ibid., 116.

37 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 165.

120 121

暗送秋波 (a beautiful woman secretly makes eyes at her lover, or ogle) degradingly taken as ansongqiubo 暗送秋菠 (to secretly deliver the autumn spinach); popular song titles, such as “Dayue zai dongji” 大約在冬季 (“Probably in the Winter”), “Taosheng yijiu” 濤聲依舊 (“The Wave Still as Before”), and “Xiangyue jiuba” 相約九八 (“Meet in 1998”); popular phrases in the 1990s such as xiagang 下崗 (laid off) in “兩顆潔白的牙齒也光榮下崗了” (two pure white teeth has been honorably laid off); idioms of the younger generation such as xinzhong ouxiang 心中偶像 (idol in the mind) and mengzhong qingren 夢中情人 (dream lover); revolutionary jargon, such as wa shehuizhuyi qiangjiao, hao shehuizhuyi yangmao 挖社會主義牆角，薅社

會主義羊毛 (to dig the socialist corner, to weed the socialist wool); classical Chinese, such as yushihu 於是乎 (thereupon); jocose grammar, such as bijiao shuai dai le 比較帥呆了 (relatively hunkish handsome); western political jargon, such as dongxi liangyuan yiyuan 東西兩院議員 (senators and congressmen) and tanhe 彈劾 (impeach) in, “這傢伙把我們家的男女老少、東

西兩院議員全找來開會，要彈劾我” (this gal implores everyone in our big family, every senate and congressman/congresswoman to hold a meeting in order to impeach me); foreign words, such as “hello,” “OK,” and “mishi” (咪西)38 in “天天吃飯啥的, 也不正經叫我了，

打電話，還說外語：Hello 啊，飯已OK啦，下來咪西吧”; and so on. The various social “languages” and speech styles, however alien, opposite, or supplementary to one another, are bound together through debasement, augmentation, or leveling. As the hybridized utterances dynamically transgress the limits of the established linguistic and social conventions, the laughter arises. The celebration of the ambivalent laughter continues toward the end of the sketch. The host asks each member of the couple for one concluding remark “from the bottom of your hearts” 發自肺腑 (fazifeifu), which would be conventionally rendered in a solemn, pompous, and formulaic tone. Song’s strong wish to meet her idol (shifen xiangjian Zhao Zhongxiang 十 分想念趙忠祥) seems a debasing parody of the revolutionary jargon of worshiping Chairman Mao (shifen xiangnian Mao Zhuxi 十分想念毛主席). Zhao’s response in his unique Errenzhuan niangen style is more about material necessity, which is “key” in his own words: “Laiqian’er de huochepiao shei gei bao le?” 來前兒的火車票誰給報了? “Who is going to reimburse us for our train tickets?”

The art of Errenzhuan as a local folk form has come a long way from the marginalized, unofficial “marketplace” of rural fields, courtyards, and dachedian 大車店 (village inns) to its legitimatization in the official mainstream broadcast media. Even though Zhao still lamented the dimming future of local folk art in his 1993 sketch (“Laobainian”), this “low” art form has gradually ascended to the high official realm and has also become a household name, with Zhao’s comic sketches in the CCTV Galas of the 1990s and a series of telenovelas “Liu Laogen” 劉老

根 (I, II, III), “Ma Dashuai” 馬大帥 (I, II, III), and “Zhengyue lilai shi xinchun” 正月裏來是新

春 (“Story of an Errenzhuan Troupe”) that aired on CCTV-1 since 2003. Thus in the 2005 CCTV Gala, the sketch “Xiaocui shuoshi” 小崔說事 (“Xiaocui talks”), a sequel to the 1999 sketch

38 The Japanese noun meshi めし(meal) is often misconceptualized by Chinese as a verb and mispronounced as

mishi or mixi in pinyin.

“Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” is followed by a show of Errenzhuan dance performance. Cui’s clumsy dance among Zhao and other professional Errenzhuan performers makes the CCTV host himself a comic figure, out of place in the realm of presumably high official culture.

Although the peripheral, premodern folk reality is represented by the central, official discourse in such a manner as to convey the ideological initiatives of the state media and official culture alike, it also seems to find legitimacy and agency in the modern television medium, which has enabled its survival and development. And although the central, official discourse attempts to manipulate the peripheral, peasant folkloric discourse to confirm its own elevated position, this confirmation is not achieved without compromise, ambiguity, nuance, and indeterminacy. The “high” official discourse has become porous enough to allow the “low” folkloric humor, with its concern with “grotesque realism,” to mix with it, to form a dialogic relationship. Since the undermining of authority and the dissolving of ideology appear contained within some bounds, the folk humor manifested in the CCTV Gala’s comic sketches evokes an ambivalent laughter, in the spirit of a utopian, Bakhtinian carnival, which simultaneously conforms and subverts, praises and abuses, asserts and denies. Such is the dynamic relationship of interpenetration, interaction, and inter-illumination between the discourse at the center and the discourse at the periphery.※

120 121

暗送秋波 (a beautiful woman secretly makes eyes at her lover, or ogle) degradingly taken as ansongqiubo 暗送秋菠 (to secretly deliver the autumn spinach); popular song titles, such as “Dayue zai dongji” 大約在冬季 (“Probably in the Winter”), “Taosheng yijiu” 濤聲依舊 (“The Wave Still as Before”), and “Xiangyue jiuba” 相約九八 (“Meet in 1998”); popular phrases in the 1990s such as xiagang 下崗 (laid off) in “兩顆潔白的牙齒也光榮下崗了” (two pure white teeth has been honorably laid off); idioms of the younger generation such as xinzhong ouxiang 心中偶像 (idol in the mind) and mengzhong qingren 夢中情人 (dream lover); revolutionary jargon, such as wa shehuizhuyi qiangjiao, hao shehuizhuyi yangmao 挖社會主義牆角，薅社

會主義羊毛 (to dig the socialist corner, to weed the socialist wool); classical Chinese, such as yushihu 於是乎 (thereupon); jocose grammar, such as bijiao shuai dai le 比較帥呆了 (relatively hunkish handsome); western political jargon, such as dongxi liangyuan yiyuan 東西兩院議員 (senators and congressmen) and tanhe 彈劾 (impeach) in, “這傢伙把我們家的男女老少、東

西兩院議員全找來開會，要彈劾我” (this gal implores everyone in our big family, every senate and congressman/congresswoman to hold a meeting in order to impeach me); foreign words, such as “hello,” “OK,” and “mishi” (咪西)38 in “天天吃飯啥的, 也不正經叫我了，

打電話，還說外語：Hello 啊，飯已OK啦，下來咪西吧”; and so on. The various social “languages” and speech styles, however alien, opposite, or supplementary to one another, are bound together through debasement, augmentation, or leveling. As the hybridized utterances dynamically transgress the limits of the established linguistic and social conventions, the laughter arises. The celebration of the ambivalent laughter continues toward the end of the sketch. The host asks each member of the couple for one concluding remark “from the bottom of your hearts” 發自肺腑 (fazifeifu), which would be conventionally rendered in a solemn, pompous, and formulaic tone. Song’s strong wish to meet her idol (shifen xiangjian Zhao Zhongxiang 十 分想念趙忠祥) seems a debasing parody of the revolutionary jargon of worshiping Chairman Mao (shifen xiangnian Mao Zhuxi 十分想念毛主席). Zhao’s response in his unique Errenzhuan niangen style is more about material necessity, which is “key” in his own words: “Laiqian’er de huochepiao shei gei bao le?” 來前兒的火車票誰給報了? “Who is going to reimburse us for our train tickets?”

The art of Errenzhuan as a local folk form has come a long way from the marginalized, unofficial “marketplace” of rural fields, courtyards, and dachedian 大車店 (village inns) to its legitimatization in the official mainstream broadcast media. Even though Zhao still lamented the dimming future of local folk art in his 1993 sketch (“Laobainian”), this “low” art form has gradually ascended to the high official realm and has also become a household name, with Zhao’s comic sketches in the CCTV Galas of the 1990s and a series of telenovelas “Liu Laogen” 劉老

根 (I, II, III), “Ma Dashuai” 馬大帥 (I, II, III), and “Zhengyue lilai shi xinchun” 正月裏來是新

春 (“Story of an Errenzhuan Troupe”) that aired on CCTV-1 since 2003. Thus in the 2005 CCTV Gala, the sketch “Xiaocui shuoshi” 小崔說事 (“Xiaocui talks”), a sequel to the 1999 sketch

38 The Japanese noun meshi めし(meal) is often misconceptualized by Chinese as a verb and mispronounced as

mishi or mixi in pinyin.

“Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” is followed by a show of Errenzhuan dance performance. Cui’s clumsy dance among Zhao and other professional Errenzhuan performers makes the CCTV host himself a comic figure, out of place in the realm of presumably high official culture.

Although the peripheral, premodern folk reality is represented by the central, official discourse in such a manner as to convey the ideological initiatives of the state media and official culture alike, it also seems to find legitimacy and agency in the modern television medium, which has enabled its survival and development. And although the central, official discourse attempts to manipulate the peripheral, peasant folkloric discourse to confirm its own elevated position, this confirmation is not achieved without compromise, ambiguity, nuance, and indeterminacy. The “high” official discourse has become porous enough to allow the “low” folkloric humor, with its concern with “grotesque realism,” to mix with it, to form a dialogic relationship. Since the undermining of authority and the dissolving of ideology appear contained within some bounds, the folk humor manifested in the CCTV Gala’s comic sketches evokes an ambivalent laughter, in the spirit of a utopian, Bakhtinian carnival, which simultaneously conforms and subverts, praises and abuses, asserts and denies. Such is the dynamic relationship of interpenetration, interaction, and inter-illumination between the discourse at the center and the discourse at the periphery.※