Mia Li was naked the first time she tried her hand at stand-up comedy. “Other people sing in the shower. I would tell jokes to myself and I would be laughing, ‘ha ha! You’re so funny Mia!’” The 29-year-old doubles over in mock laughter — an exaggerated impersonation of her comic bathing routine. “For the longest time, I had this joke about me being a reporter. I said: ‘I have to go to press conferences wearing a badge on my chest that says ‘Press’. And then some people would press! Now I have two choices: Either I can press back — in that case I am a correspondent. Or, I can tell my boss about it — in that case I am a reporter.’”

China Daily tells the above story of how Mia Li discovered the work of George Carlin, Mitch Hedberg and other US comedians and started a grassroots comedy night in Beijing.

Despite a nervy start, Mia’s stand-up comedy career has been a success so far. “I got the loudest round of applause because I had an element of surprise. No one expects this young Chinese woman to be talking about religion and abortion and newsgathering. I remember riding home and thinking ‘that was the best night of my life’.”

Here she is in action.

The paper has more:

Three years after that debut performance, Li is one of Beijing’s promising young comedians, regularly taking the stage to entertain audiences with her distinct brand of deadpan humour.

Traditionally, comedy in China has been the domain of xiangsheng, or cross-talk, a folk art with a nearly 200-year history in which two performers engage in a verbal rally of stories and puns.
Stand-up, by comparison, is more relaxed and has a unique appeal.

There’s no need to memorize large tracts of material. And there are no hard and fast rules.
A performer stands in front of an audience and tells jokes and makes observations on any topic and in any style. All you need is a microphone, an audience and the courage to get up.

The Hot Cat Club in Beijing’s Fangjia Hutong hosts two stand-up comedy nights a week — an English-language night on Wednesday and Chinese-language on Saturday. And ticketed showcase events, in both English and Chinese, are regularly held throughout the city.

Chinese-American comedian Joe Wong, whose speech at the 2010 White House Correspondents’ Dinner made him a star in America, predicts big things for stand-up comedy in China.

“It’s more personal, and it has a sense of reality to it. With xiangsheng, they usually make up a fake story and talk about that story for 20 minutes and slip in a joke once in a while. So with stand-up comedy you basically go onstage and say: ‘How do you feel about these things? How do you feel about this world?’ And (you) make that funny. So that’s a very different angle.”

This trend is not simply concentrated in Beijing. TakeOut Comedy has brought grassroots stand-up to Shenzhen, with mixed results. There are probably plenty of Mia Li’s in the PRD ready to be discovered.