From my limited experience of having lived in Lanzhou and Shanghai for a total of 12 years, I found most Chinese humor to be slapstick or Jerry Lewis style, such as presented on the TV gala for eve of Spring Festival. An exception was a movie I watched about a match-making service. I forget the name, but something like "If This Is the One". The male lead actor had shaved scalp, and his humor was subtle and droll, but made me laugh out loud. I rarely find humor that satisfying. I compare this to Chinese workmanship before recent years – most of it is dreadful, because there is low demand for higher quality. It isn't that Chinese workers were not capable of higher quality before 2000; they simply don't find a large domestic market for it. About Den Xiaoping joke, wouldn't his pronunciation of "Sha shi" be "sa si"? I got confused my first visit to Sichuan when a fruit vendor told me the price was 十 块. I thought he said 四块. My tones were not good enough for me to notice any difference. Oh, about the car crash description, shouldn't that be "two car pengpeng"?
