ABSTRACT
The unfortunate fact that humour does not travel very well is just one more symptom of how radically ways of looking at the world can differ. It frequently results in accusations that one nation or another, never one’s own, is devoid of all sense of humour. The inevitable huffy response is often illuminating. In Lin’s case, it was to argue that the essence of the Chinese sense of humour resides in a well-developed – if rather grim – sense of farce:
In spite of the serious style of their editorial and political writings, which are seldom relieved by humour, they often surprise foreigners by the extremely light manner in which they take important reform programmes and movements. . . . Political programmes and official statements are issued as matters of form, being drafted by clerks who specialize in a kind of specious, bombastic phraseology . . . and no intelligent Chinese ever takes them seriously.
