Female comedians tackle taboos

Stand-up comedy is no more just a man's world in China

Beijing: Strutting onstage with well-honed confidence, 23-year-old comedian Qiqi is part of a new wave of young, female stand-up acts in China, crashing into what has always previously been a man’s world.

Her jokes were met with roars of laughter from the well-heeled young professionals watching in a packed Beijing theatre. “I’ve always liked making people laugh ever since I was small, it gives me a sense of accomplishment,” Qiqi said. She is among those benefiting from a surge of interest in stand-up in China, thanks to a wildly popular new web series called Rock & Roast.

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“My boss can’t even properly describe the tasks he wants me to do,” Qiqi, sporting dyed strawberry blonde pigtails and dangling cherry earrings, riffed to knowing chuckles from the crowd. “He said, ‘Hey, can you arrange a meeting with so-and-so?’ The person, time and place are all missing. It’s like he expects us to have some kind of telepathic connection!” Qiqi’s full-time job is at an internet media company, and her sets often draw upon her daily life and common millennial complaints.

She first dabbled in open mic performances three years ago, when stand-up was making its first inroads in China – shows where she says she “had no idea what she was doing”. But the self-deprecation in her act is something fans are drawn to. “One of the biggest characteristics of female comedians is that they dare to laugh at themselves,” said one audience member after a recent performance.

And Qiqi is steadily gaining fans, earning up to 9,000 yuan ($1,400) a month from shows. “When I first arrived in Beijing after graduation, I realised Beijing has inherited an age-old traditional northern Chinese culture – swearing,” ran another of Qiqi’s jokes. Qiqi says she was once called “vulgar and cheap” for swearing by an online viewer, and argues that women are subjected to more scrutiny than their male counterparts.

Yang Mei, another Beijing-based comedian, agrees that audiences “don’t like female comedians swearing but see men swearing as normal, maybe because they think women are supposed to be more obedient.”

“I think women are natural performers, because we’ve been considerate of men’s thoughts and feelings since we were little, but suppress our own,” said Yang. “But nowadays, there are more and more channels for women to express themselves – including stand-up comedy.”