Ni Hao, I'm Funny: Des Bishop is Making Comedy in Beijing

“When I was 14, I’d already lost my virginity. Nobody in my class was like that. They couldn’t believe it when I told them. Of course back in New York that was completely normal.” Des Bishop’s life is a series of cross-cultural jokes, and he tells them smoothly in his thick Queens’ accent.At age 14 he was sent to a semi-rural Irish boarding school. He’d just been kicked out of school in New York for a drinking problem. The irony of this solution-moving to Ireland to stop drinking is all to clear to him and is a standard punch line in his stand up act when he performs to new audiences. It’s how he likes to introduce himself.

In his Chinese stand up routine the pattern repeats itself. He introduces himself with a joke about how he chose a terrible name: Bi Xiaoping. Bi is after Bishop but unfortunately is also a homonym for a vulgar slang term, and Xiaoping after Deng Xiaoping.

RELATED: Des Bishop in Town to Learn Chinese

The phrase tossed around about Bishop most, is that he has built a career on "fitting in, from learning how to engage with people out of necessity.” The world-renowned comedian is in China this year doing just that. He is shooting a TV program for Irish audiences that documents his journey learning to do stand up in Chinese. Classes at Renmin University, a homestay, a short stint at a restaurant in Heilongjiang, and dating girls on WeChat are just scrapes of his experience.

Bishop’s brand of comedy is rooted in immersion. His 2008 TV show, In the Name of Fada follows him as he tries to learn to do standup in Irish. Another series documents him working a minimum wage jobs in Ireland. He also produced a Gaelic version of the song “Jump Around” called “Léim Thart”.

In the video below, Beijing comedian Jesse Apell performs in Chinese. He is joined by Des Bishop at 06:12 for a sneak preview of their upcoming Chinese spoof of "Jump Around".

Those experiences, along with some Chinese friends he made along the way and an obsession with kung fu, eventually led to the idea of doing a similar project in China. His goal is to learn the language and perform a successful comedy routine in one year. The result will be reality TV meets professional comedy, with a touch of social commentary. Bishop puts it simply: “Talking about the experience in actuality, but doing it in a fun way.”

Watching him perform live in English, a few things are clear. He has the energy of a world-class performer, talented and experienced; he can light up any room. He’s insightful, after not even a year here his jokes about life in China hit the nail on the head and are executed with such power that audiences can’t help but clutch their guts in laughter. He works hard. After just a few months learning the language, the 37-year-old comedian is already putting acts together in Chinese and delivering them at Chinese language comedy workshops in small venues like Hot Cat Club.

What Bishop is trying to accomplish here is not ‘white guy makes Chinese people laugh because he’s white and can say a tongue twister in cracked Mandarin’. This is a phenomenon that he feels is a result of a lack of evolution in Chinese comedy forms. Foreign performers get typecast into these roles. Their Chinese is good and they have performance talent, but the stale art forms restricts them and then these clichés evolve. 

He’d like to see someone “break free from the relics” and develop Chinese comedy in a way that can be relevant.He is an advocate for adapting Western comedy styles into Chinese, an idea he is exploring and helping to develop with his involvement in comedy clubs around the country, where he sees a scene with a lot of potential. His goal isn’t about Chinese prowess, but just to be funny.

“Say I did like an awesome performance, it would kill me if everybody was just like ‘your Chinese is really good.’ I’d almost not include my Chinese just so people could say ‘It was funny cause it was funny. Not because you’re a foreigner that can speak Chinese.’ That would be the ultimate achievement.”

Bishop has already planned to team up with local Chinese speaking comedian Jesse Apell, the performer behind the “Laowai Style” parody video that went viral last year, to do a Chinese version of “Jump Around.” But comparing himself to Apell, Bishop says: “I’m trying to use my experience learning Chinese to tell a story about learning about China. Jesse is fluent and he’s trying to take his deep understanding of Chinese humor do something fun. But at the end of the day I’m making a TV show about a journey he had three years ago … I think it’s all about stories. At the end of the day people can follow a story and take what they can out of that story.”

Des Bishop hosts a regular comedy night at The Bookworm called The Humor Section. On Nov 8 and 9 he will be hosting performances at The Humor Section by visiting comedian Tom Rhodes.

A version of this article appears in the November 2013 issue of the Beijinger.

Photos: Ken, Courtesy of Des Bishop

Email: nickrichards@thebeijinger.com
Weibo: @NickRichards尼克
Twitter: @nik_richards

More stories by this author here.