12 Facts About Xiangsheng

Xiangsheng is generally thought to have originated in the late Qing Dynasty, particularly during the rules of the Xianfeng Emperor and the Tongzhi Emperor in the mid-1800s, although its roots may extend as far back as the Ming Dynasty.

Many skits in "traditional Xiangsheng" have evolved through generations of performers successively revising material, retaining the general structure or "heart" of a piece while updating specific references with more modern material.

One of the earliest Xiangsheng pioneers is a person known by name of Zhang Sanlu, who performed during the mid-19th century.

Xiangsheng entered a period of decline in the 1990s, caused largely by increased official sensitivity towards political and social satire following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, as well as the lack of performance venues outside of sanitized state-run television programming.

In 1949, a group of Xiangsheng performers followed the Republic of China's retreat to Taiwan.

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In 2005, This Night, Women Speak Xiangsheng—performed by Fang Fang, Deng Chenghui, and Xiao Ai —was launched.

Northern Xiangsheng has been popular in Hong Kong since the Zhongyuan period.

In old Hong Kong movies, Xiangsheng-inspired comedy began to integrate into early Hong Kong cinema, mostly in the form of monologues and characters teasing each other.

Xiangsheng began to appear in several variants in the variety show, such as the host's speech and the show to show lines.

Xiangsheng went to China in September of 2012 to study Chinese at Tsinghua University as a Fulbright Scholar.

Xiangsheng sees himself as a cultural ambassador, combining his talents with the power of the Internet to help US -China relations and bridge cultural gaps.

Small scale and popularity of Xiangsheng make it second only to word of mouth in reflecting popular concerns.