Canadian language educator, cultural envoy and comedian Mark Rowswell is known to his Chinese audience as Dashan, his stage name as a traditional Chinese crosstalk artist, a genre called xiangsheng. He studied the art from xiangsheng maestro Jiang Kun and became a bilingual performer, appearing on stage as well as TV shows.

Over the years, Rowswell has become a leading figure in the cultural exchange between China and the West. He was the team attaché for the Canadian Olympic Committee at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, a member of the Chinese media delegation at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Canada’s Commissioner General for Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

In 2006, he was awarded the Order of Canada, the highest distinction in the Canadian honors system, and in 2012, was named “Canada’s Goodwill Ambassador to China.” In 2018, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta.

A photograph of Mark Rowswell.

Mark Rowswell

In 1989, when China Central Television (CCTV), China’s national broadcaster, aired its popular annual gala to celebrate the Chinese New Year, a blond Canadian student dressed in a Chinese military coat appeared in a skit, speaking Chinese with a foreign accent. It was Mark Rowswell and the appearance was the start of a special relationship with China.

He was the first foreign xiangsheng performer to formally study the art from a Chinese maestro, and his solo show “Dashan Live” was loved by many Chinese viewers.

As an artist who has “walked back and forth between the Chinese and Western cultures for many years,” Rowswell shares his thoughts on the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western comedy and the universality of humor in promoting cultural exchange between the East and the West.

CNS: How did you wade into Chinese comedy? What made you adhere to the art for decades?

Mark Rowswell: In 1988, I went to China to study at Peking University. I had already studied Chinese at the University of Toronto for four years, so my Chinese language skills were a little bit better than other international students’, and my teachers suggested that I participate in CCTV’s new-year gala. I took part in a skit along with two popular comic pairs, Jiang Kun and Tang Jiezhong, and Hou Yaowen and Shi Fukuan, and that was my first introduction to xiangsheng. It was also my performance for a large viewership and the skit got rather good reviews. My stage name Dashan came from that performance.

When I was studying Chinese in Canada, textbooks were my only medium, so I was captivated by the vivid and expressive xiangsheng. Then an unexpected opportunity came my way. I was delighted to have a chance to formally learn xiangsheng. So I became a student of Jiang Kun and paired up with Chinese artist Ding Guangquan.

I continued to learn and perform until the late 1990s. At the beginning, for publicity our show relied on the novelty of a foreigner speaking Chinese dialects and tongue twisters, and singing the Peking Opera. But these were all very superficial things that anyone could do after some memorizing and practice. When Dashan became a public figure in China, I felt I needed to improve the content of my show.

After several years, I returned to comedy with “Dashan Live.” I began to explore a new type of monologue, breaking away from the old “teacher vs. student” mode. Dashan Live was a cross between stand-up comedy and monologue, with elements of both classic comic genres. To enrich my xiangsheng, I tried to incorporate some elements from my own cultural background.

CNS: What do you think is the charm of xiangsheng? How does it differ from the traditional stand-up comedy of the West?

Mark Rowswell: In my eyes, the greatest appeal of xiangsheng is that it is emotional. The pursuit of emotional communication is a very lofty state. Don’t underestimate the element that makes people laugh during a performance. The laughter means that the actor has resonated with the audience.

I was particularly inspired by one act of his. In one of his programs, taking a dig at the free market, Jiang Kun said, “Eggs are precious, but duck eggs even more so. However, for century eggs (a kind of preserved egg dish), you have to add 50 cents more.” When the audience heard this, they burst out laughing.

Why was it funny though it was true? Then? Because it mimicked a famous poem by Hungarian poet Sándor Petőfi (that was popularized in China by Lu Xun and also taught in middle schools). A line from the poem says, “Life is precious but love is even more so. However, for freedom, I can sacrifice both.” It was a cross-cultural comic creation, full of wisdom.

Chinese comedy is a highly individualized form of artistic performance that is unique and needs to be followed and promoted by generations of successors; Western stand-up comedy is a common form of Western oral comic performance, loosely styled, in which the actors are more casual and impromptu.

Compared to Western comedy, Chinese comedy has two additional dimensions. First, you need certain techniques or skills, such as guankou (the skill of reciting a speech in one breath). In some traditional shows, the audience appreciates the performer’s techniques, while Western comedy pays less attention to this aspect. The other dimension is cultural inheritance. Western comedy focuses more on the present, and almost no one performs traditional works that are decades or even centuries old; but for xiangsheng, traditional content is important, and the audience will evaluate the performance by the standard of artistic appreciation to judge its authenticity.

CNS: Of the various forms of art, comedy requires sharing more common cultural practices with the audience. How does Chinese comedy resonate with popular foreign comedy?

Mark Rowswell: Compared with music, opera, drama and other art forms, comedy requires more active participation by the audience in the form of laughter, and demands more shared cultural practices in the audience.

For example, the traditional comedy show Wai Pi San Guo (A Funny Review of The Three Kingdoms) is based on the audience’s familiarity with the Chinese classic The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The audience can understand the comic review only if they are familiar with the novel. In the West too, there are many classic comedies that allude to famous sayings or events like Biblical happenings.

However, today, comedy focuses less on techniques and traditional stories and more on contemporary everyday life, which can overcome cultural barriers more easily. The difference between Chinese and popular foreign comedy is diminishing largely due to the growth of the Internet. With more and more young Chinese watching Western stand-up comedy on the Internet, the Chinese form of stand-up comedy is growing rapidly.

Xiangsheng is still popular with Chinese audiences. Some performers can switch between the Chinese and the Western style smoothly, sometimes using the format of stand-up comedy and sometimes the traditional style of xiangsheng. The development of stand-up comedy provides a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between Chinese and foreign comedy.

CNS: You once said that Dashan Live is a mix of Eastern and Western cultures. What do you think is an ideal mix of the East and the West?

Mark Rowswell: Dashan Live followed a Western style because I was stepping out of the fixed pattern of previous performances intentionally. As a 60-minute solo show, it had a complete structure from beginning to end, telling an autobiographical story with a clear narrative logic. It was different from the monologue of xiangsheng, which tells only one story, and was also different from Western stand-up comedy, which is loosely structured.

If I compare it with stand-up comedy, my language was not as colloquial as some young stand-up comedians’; instead, it was carefully designed and had a structure, complete with a punchline. These elements were reminiscent of the techniques of xiangsheng. Although my performance didn’t have the typical features of xiangsheng, it still had some of its basic traits due to my long period of xiangsheng training.

I wish a new form of performance could be created by combining Chinese and Western performing arts and by combining traditional and contemporary arts. With some innovation comedy can become a medium to promote exchanges between China and the West.

CNS: In China, Dashan is considered “non-Chinese but not an outsider.” What do you think of China and Chinese culture from your decades of studying and working in China? And what do you think about the misunderstanding of Chinese culture that sometimes exists in other countries?

Mark Rowswell: I love the phrase “Dashan is a non-Chinese but not an outsider.” When I started appearing in front of a Chinese audience, China was going out to the world and the world was approaching China. Maybe my appearance was also a symbol of the cultural exchange phenomenon at that time.

Since then, I have also made videos reading ancient Chinese poems, behind which is a long period of learning as well as my respect and love for traditional Chinese culture.

When different cultures first come into contact, people only see the differences. But differences are not a bad thing and somehow create mutual attraction. Living between the Eastern and Western cultures, I have come to increasingly appreciate that living in two or more cultures for a long period of time leads to a greater sense of cultural commonalities. Many things may seem different on the surface, but when you understand them more, you realize they actually share a common nature; only it is expressed differently.

I think it is not the difference that causes the problem, the problem lies in lack of tolerance and acceptance. Over the years I have been studying the differences between Eastern and Western humor. In China, there are differences in the humor of southerners and northerners; in Europe too, English humor and French humor are different. Each place has its own characteristics, and if you look at them in depth, you will find that the essence of the humors is still similar and understandable to each other.

That’s my thought as a person who has been “walking back and forth” between the Chinese and Western cultures. Comedy needs empathy between the actor and the audience. As a foreign performer, most audiences I faced were Chinese, so I always looked for the commonalities in the differences. And the responses proved that we have a resonance.

(Interviewed by Gao Kai)