There is a crosstalk theater on the ground floor of the north area of ​​Guomao Mall in Chaoyang District, which regularly holds special sessions of "Cross Talk Meets of Favorites", which attracts many young audiences.

　　Behind this is a comedy team formed by several young crosstalk actors and a group of foreign comedians who love Chinese culture in 2019. The team has young members from different countries. Their crosstalk combines traditional artistic style and modern international elements, which not only amuses the audience, but also adds new vitality to Beijing's creation of a "City of Performing Arts".

　　How did these "false people" gather in Beijing and embark on the path of crosstalk? We walked into the theater and chatted with them.

Ukrainian guy Yeguo

Select guests to go on stage to cooperate with the performance

"Crossing Talk Meets Affects Affected" team took a photo with the audience

　　Nishida Satoshi

"Crossing Talk Meets Affects Affected" performs a voice show

　　Team creation

　　The founder called "Faiguoren" crosstalk fans

　　"A few words? Are they idioms?"

　　"Should it be?"

　　"What is the first word?"

　　"It should be a 'knowing thing'."

　　"I understand things? Are they animals?"

　　In the recent special performance of "Cross Talk Meets Affects", the program team set up a game session of "You're better than I guess" and randomly invited a Japanese student audience to the stage to accept the challenge with Japanese crosstalk actor Satoshi Nishida. The title of the game is "Parrell". Since the rules stipulate that only communication can be done in Chinese, the two Japanese couldn't explain it clearly on stage.

　　Seeing this scene, the guest host, crosstalk actor Yan Jiabao, couldn't help but laugh and said, "For the first time I saw two Japanese people interacting so hard!" The audience in the audience was also successfully amused by them.

　　On the road to innovation in crosstalk art, the "Cross Talk Meets Affects Affects" team has won the love of many audiences with its unique cross-cultural performance style. This is a team founded by young crosstalk actor Yan Jiabao and Ukrainian crosstalk actor Yeguo. Yan Jiabao was born in a family of Liyuan and has tried to perform crosstalk in foreign languages ​​since 2012. As the team manager and one of the few Chinese members on the team, he cooperated with his Ukrainian partner Yeguo, who was playing Beijing movies. It is worth mentioning that Yeguo is a foreign disciple of Mr. Ding Guangquan, a famous crosstalk artist.

　　Speaking of the birth of "cross talk meets bad guys", we have to mention the crosstalk performance artist Mr. Ding Guangquan. As a teacher at Beijing Language and Culture University, Ding Guangquan was committed to cultivating foreign disciples during his lifetime. The students he led could even speak "Registering for a Dish" even better than the Chinese exam. After Ding Guangquan passed away in 2018, his foreign disciples once lost the stage of performance. Yeguo and Yan Jiabao decided to form a team and specifically "take in" those "Free Guoren" who are obsessed with crosstalk.

　　Since its establishment in 2019, "Cross Talk Meets Favorites" has insisted on performing two shows per month, attracting crosstalk enthusiasts from Australia, Ukraine, Japan, the United States, Congo, Russia, South Korea, Myanmar and other countries to join. Among them are university teachers, hosts, and voice actors. With their respective language characteristics and cultural backgrounds, they inject new vitality into traditional crosstalk.

　　Apprentice to famous masters

　　The fast-speed cultural "highway" hidden in the Guankou

　　In the "Cross Talk Meets Affects" team, the members have different origins from crosstalk, but eventually got together due to their common hobbies.

　　In 2010, Ukrainian young man Yeguo became famous in the 9th "Chinese Bridge" competition - not only won the Ukrainian division championship, but also obtained a ticket to the China Finals. It was also in the finals where experts gathered, that Yeguo met Ding Guangquan who took foreign disciples to perform on stage. In just a few words, the audience ignited. This magic of using language art to create joy instantly hit Yeguo - it turns out that Chinese can still be "played" like this!

　　From then on, this Ukrainian academic master started the "star-chasing" mode: he ate Chinese textbooks during the day and repeatedly watched crosstalk videos at night. Hard work pays off, and he finally got what he wanted and became one of the foreign disciples under Ding Guangquan's sect.

　　When he first met, Ding Guangquan asked Yeguo to listen to the "Eight Fans Screens". Facing the allusion-filled Guankou, the Ukrainian young man was completely confused: "This is not learning Chinese, it is simply archaeology!" But as he practiced, those difficult words and sentences suddenly seemed to be "lighted", and historical figures "live" in their lines.

　　Now when recalling it, Ye Guo still sighed: "I felt that I was in my back and now I realized that Master took us on a fast-paced highway." Under the influence of crosstalk, Ye Guo gradually realized the dual value of crosstalk: I understand that it is not only a powerful tool for learning Chinese, but also a carrier for the dissemination of Chinese culture.

　　Entering life

　　Integrate experiences into performance

　　Satoshi Nishida, a major comedy city in Kyoto, Japan, initially signed up for the "Happy Class" jointly organized by Beijing Language and Culture University and Ding Guangquan just to correct Chinese pronunciation. Unexpectedly, this decision made him have an indissoluble bond with crosstalk.

　　As a child of the hometown of "Mancai" (Editor's note: Mancai is a traditional comedy performance form in Japan, usually performed by two people, similar to China's counterpart crosstalk), Satoshi Nishida keenly noticed the similarities and differences between the two comedy arts: "Mancai is like a 'shutter freeze,' pursuing instant hilariousness; crosstalk is 'long-shot narrative', which emphasizes natural humor." This artistic collision ignited his enthusiasm for learning, and also allowed him to meet like-minded "foreign students" such as Dashan and Yeguo.

　　In the process of learning crosstalk, Satoshi Nishida gradually realized that "you can't just learn language, but also learn culture." He admitted that he once regarded crosstalk as a tool to improve Chinese, but later discovered that language is the tool. So he began to take the initiative to enter the lives of Chinese people, experience their joys, sorrows, and joys, and then try to integrate what he saw and heard into his performance.

　　Style creation

　　"International joke" has both burdens and moderation

　　Exploring personal style and performance rhythm in crosstalk is a compulsory course for every crosstalk actor. The "Cross Talk Meets Affects Affected" team is also experiencing this artistic practice together - Yan Jiabao is like a "cultural translator", leading this group of foreign young people to repeatedly polish the script, adjust the rhythm, and design characters. They will boldly integrate Internet hot words such as "Absolute Son" and "Barbie Q" into traditional jokes, and even compile contemporary Chinese life scenes such as takeaway boys and live streaming goods into new baggages. "We are not talking about crosstalk, we are using crosstalk to talk about China in our eyes." Yeguo said.

　　However, we must not only retain the traditional characteristics of crosstalk, but also integrate the unique style of foreign actors, so the difficulty of content creation naturally increases. Fortunately, the "Cross Talk Meets Affects Affects" team has their own solutions. They will combine online hotspots to carry out secondary innovations to achieve "breaking the circle" dissemination. For example, after discovering that the popularity of the variety show "Goodbye Lover" has continued to rise, Yan Jiabao designed an interactive session of "the way of breaking up between lovers from various countries" in a special show. When Yeguo, a Ukrainian Chinese son-in-law, shared the breakup customs of his hometown on stage, his Chinese wife unexpectedly made the show. When "wife strict control" encountered "breakup culture" - a contrasting comedy effect that made the husband cowardly instantly pushed the atmosphere to a climax.

　　On this stage full of cultural collisions, how to deal with "offensive" in humor is also a challenge for creators.

　　Li Baike, a voice actor from Australia, said that she admires Yan Jiabao and the actors' grasp of "degree" when discussing Taiwanese scripts. "Jabao doesn't use offensive jokes easily. When he communicates with actors from various countries, he will also point out directly what may be uncomfortable. We find expressions that suit us more quickly in this way."

　　Satoshi Nishida also said, "I didn't even dare to make 'international jokes' at the beginning (when I joined the team). But he slowly discovered that "international jokes" could help him open up more space for in-depth communication on the crosstalk stage and let him get closer to the audience.

　　Under the stage

　　Become a role model for students in authentic Beijing accent

　　The lights on the stage were on, and these foreign young people were professional crosstalk actors; after the performance, they integrated into the daily life of the city with their respective professional identities.

　　"He doesn't treat himself as a foreigner, and the Chinese flavor is stronger than mine!" Yeguo's wife Ruoxi smiled and said that this Ukrainian son-in-law is not only proficient in Chinese, but also well versed in the world of China. "During holidays, his burden of shaking in Chinese at the dinner table can always make the whole family laugh."

　　Nishida Satoshi is also a genuine "Beijing accent". He is his hobby of picking walnuts, eating braised and cooking, drinking soy sauce in burnt circles, and wearing old-fashioned shoes to visit Pan's home. Nowadays, Satoshi Nishida works as a Japanese teacher in Beijing. Students often come to the theater to listen to him speak crosstalk. Students will joke: "We must learn Japanese as well as you learn Chinese." Satoshi Nishida responded modestly: "Actually, I just love crosstalk, and I didn't expect to be a role model."

　　"To be honest, my crosstalk is still far from it." During the interview, Satoshi Nishida unconsciously showed his awe of the art of crosstalk. He explained with a serious look: "Creating characters in crosstalk, I still have the time to get angry."

　　A further goal

　　Continuously polishing works to tour around the world

　　In fact, as the manager of the team, Yan Jiabao also has his concerns: "The most difficult thing is how to keep the audience 'buy'." During the team rehearsal, you can often hear the members laughing, but everyone understands that "it's far more difficult to amuse the audience than to amuse themselves." Compared to Yeguo saying that what he enjoys the most is the creative process, Yan Jiabao cares more about the audience’s feedback: “It’s really fun to have a joke that sounds.”

　　Today, while these young foreign crosstalk actors are also facing challenges in their career development while improving their art. "Turning hobbies into careers is a hurdle, but we have a further goal - touring around the world." Yeguo said with a flash of light in his eyes.

　　Recently, "Cross Talk Meets Affected by False People" toured in Paris and London respectively. In particular, the success of the Paris performance injected confidence into Yan Jiabao and Yeguo, "Laughter has no borders, and humor is the common language of the world." After Yan Jiabao said that, he smiled at Yeguo.

　　At present, this team is still carefully collecting feedback from overseas audiences and constantly polishing their works. They hope that the traditional art of crosstalk can bring joy and resonance to more people from different cultural backgrounds around the world. (This edition of text/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Zhang Zhiyi intern Yang Ruyi coordinated/Lin Yan and Zhang Bin)

[Editor in charge: Tang Wei]