Category Archives: Humor

Leaving the Stove On and the Faucet Running – Chinese Joke

Nationality: Asian American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 03/17/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Cantonese, Korean

Context: This joke was told by one of my coworkers at a boba place. We had closed early that day and the manager had brought us pizza, so we ate and took turns telling jokes. I chimed in and asked if I could use some of them for my folklore project, to which my coworker (KC) agreed. This is the last joke that she told us.

Story: 

“An old married couple went out for dinner one night. The wife suddenly shouted ‘Oh crap, I forgot to turn off the stove, there could be a fire’. She urged her husband to hurry home with her. The husband thought about it for a while, then comforted her saying ‘don’t worry, I also forgot to turn off the faucet.’”

Background: My coworker got this joke from her dad, who heard it from his dad. She thought the joke was funny because it played off of stereotypes of old couples in China and how they are always forgetful. The punchline is that while the wife forgot to turn off the stove, the house wouldn’t burn down because the husband also forgot to turn off the faucet and left the water running.

Thoughts: This joke actually made me laugh out loud, and the punchline is pretty unique. One thing that I’ve learned from hearing a lot of Chinese jokes through my parents, friends, and different television channels is that there are a lot of jokes about old married couples where the wife is often annoyed at the husband and the husband often has to comfort the wife. The funny part of most of these jokes is that at least one of the two is forgetful of something. I’ve often seen my parents and friend’s parents point to each other and say “that’s you” jokingly when they hear an old married couple joke, which I think sheds insight into how the joke contributes to Chinese culture in the sense that these stereotypes have at least some sort of universal truth to them.

Spiderman Knows the Pig – Chinese Joke

Nationality: Asian American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 03/17/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Cantonese, Korean

Context: This joke was told by one of my coworkers at a boba place. We had closed early that day and the manager had brought us pizza, so we ate and took turns telling jokes. I chimed in and asked if I could use one of them for my folklore project, to which my coworker (KC) agreed. This is the second joke that she told us.

Story: 

KC in Mandarin: “谁最知道猪?”

Roman Phonetic: “shei zui zhi dao zhu”

  • Transliterated:
    • shei: who
    • zui: the most
    • zhi dao: knows
    • zhu: pig
      • Translation: Who knows pigs the best?

Everyone after thinking about it for a while: “Who?”

KC in Mandarin: “蜘蛛人”

Roman Phonetic: “zhi zhu ren”

  • Transliterated:
    • zhi zhu: Spider 
    • zhi: know 
    • zhu: pig
    • ren: man
      • Translation: Spiderman (Know-pig man)

Background: My coworker got this joke online when she was getting ready to tell us jokes. The punchline is based on a pun, because the Chinese word for spider (zhi zhu) also sounds like the combination of the words, “know” (zhi) and “pig” (zhu). So the answer to the riddle of who knows pigs the best is Spiderman, which can also be read as Know-pig man or man who knows pigs. 

Thoughts: I found this joke to be pretty funny, because I didn’t know that Chinese jokes, like jokes in English, frequently used puns. There are many variants of jokes that play off of the word “Spiderman” that are and have been popular in China and in Asian communities. An example of another joke using spiderman is playing off phrases that sound like “shi bai de ren”, which can mean many different things in Mandarin, but plays off of the fact that “shi bai de” ni Mandarin sounds like “spider” in English and “ren” means man.

Vampire’s Favorite Drink – Korean Joke

Nationality: Asian American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Santa Barbara, California
Performance Date: 03/24/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin, Korean

Context: I went over to my friend, JK’s, place in Santa Barbara, and we went out for lunch and talked about what we did over Chinese New Year. I asked him if he knew why people wear red and make so much noise over Chinese New Year, and he told me a myth explaining the reasoning behind these things. I also asked him if he knew any jokes, and he told me a joke that his Dad likes to tell people.  

Story: 

JK: “What is a vampire’s favorite drink in the morning?”

Me: “What is it?”

JK: “코피 (Kopi)” *grins*

Background: This joke is one that JK says is a dad joke and one that his own father uses frequently on people. The word for “blood” in Korean is 피 (pi), and 코 (ko) in Korean means “nose”. Since vampires drink blood, their favorite drink would be from a bloody nose. However, when you put 코 (nose) and 피 (blood) together in Korean, it sounds like kopi (coffee) in English, which is the punchline of the joke. 

Covering One’s Ears to Steal a Bell – Chinese Joke

Nationality: Asian American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 03/17/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean, Cantonese

Context: This joke was told by one of my coworkers at a boba place. We had closed early that day and the manager had brought us pizza, so we ate and took turns telling jokes. I chimed in and asked if I could use one of them for my folklore project, to which my coworker (KC) agreed. 

Story: 

KC: “Okay so this joke is one that I found really funny, but I think I found it funny cause it just seemed really stupid. So there was this guy who wanted to steal this huge bell from a rival clan in China.  This bell was very important to the rival clan. There was a problem though because the bell was very big and lugging it around would be too obvious due to the noise it would make. So after sitting around for a while and thinking about how to steal the bell, he came up with what he thought was a brilliant idea. He used two pieces of cloth to plug his ears because he thought that this would reduce the sound that the bell made and that no one would be able to hear it. He started to carry the bell away, and people soon stormed in and caught him in the act.”

Background: My coworker learned about this joke from her father two weeks prior to telling it to us at work. She really likes the joke because she “didn’t get the punch line at first when [her] father first told her, but upon realizing what the thief actually did, [she] kept laughing for a few minutes”. According to her observation of the reaction that people have after she tells them the joke, they either “snort of the sheer stupidity of the thief if they get the joke right away or chuckle for a long time after realizing the punchline. 

Thoughts: When my coworkers and I were told the joke, a few of us got the punchline immediately and snorted at the same time, which made everything even funnier. I went home to tell the joke to my father, who laughed and said the joke was actually really popular in China and there was actually a Chinese idiom that was made because of the joke. The idiom, 掩耳盗铃, means to cover one’s ears while stealing a bell and is supposed to tell people not to deceive themselves with stupidity and to think things through before doing them. 

The Kohen Joke

Nationality: American
Age: 88
Occupation: Retired; Former Physician
Residence: Baltimore, MD
Performance Date: May 2, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Yiddish

Main piece: Man goes to his Rabbi and tells him there’s something he’s always wanted to be. Rabbi says, “What’s that?” He says, “I want to be a Kohen.” Rabbi says, “You want to be a Kohen? I can’t make you a Kohen. Why do you want to be a Kohen?” He says “I’ve always wanted to be a Kohen,” and he offers any kind of contribution that the Rabbi wants. He says “The shul needs a new roof. I’ll buy a new roof.” Rabbi says, “Now that’s interesting”. The Rabbi thinks about it and says, “Well let me see if I can work something out”. So Rabbi calls him a few days later, and says “I think I found a way to do it, and I think I found a way to make you a Kohen. We’ll have a ceremony in the shul, and I’ll say the bruchas, and I’ll bless you and you’ll be a Kohen.” So they go through all of this, and the man buys them a new roof for the shul. And everyone’s happy. A few months later, the Rabbi says “Tell me. Something’s been bothering me. Why all these years you wanted to be a Kohen so badly?” He says, “Well my grandfather was a Kohen, and my father was a Kohen, so I wanted to be a Kohen too!”

Background: My informant is an eighty-eight year old Jewish man from Baltimore, Maryland, and a Kohen himself. 

Context: The Kohanim are one of the twelve tribes of Israel, who historically took on the position of high priests, as they are said to be descendants of Aaron. Kohanim in modern Jewish settings today still perform blessings over the congregation. Tribal identity within the Jewish faith is established through the patrilineal line – my informant’s grandfather and father were both Kohanim, so my informant is as well. Shul is a yiddish term for synagogue, or place of worship, and bruchas are another word for blessings. 

After telling me the story about pidyon habens, my informant said “Well, I know a joke about Kohens too!” He doesn’t remember where he heard the joke the first time, but he thinks it was a friend who made him laugh.

Analysis: The joke here is that you can’t make anyone a Kohen – it’s a position only earned through birth, and the man who wanted to be a Kohen couldn’t be made one because he was a Kohen all along. It’s both silly because the man made a stupid mistake, but also it reinforces the status quo – that in terms of tribal identity within the Jewish faith, you can’t move up or down in the hierarchy, and become a high priest. Kohanim are believed to be descendants of Aaron, who was Moses’s brother, so it’s an impressive and weighty heritage and tradition. Kohen have privileges and opportunities to bless the congregation when other members do not. People could interpret the Rabbi’s willingness to make the man a Kohen for a new roof as sacrilegious or folly, and are scared because the status quo has been disrupted by a holy man who should know better. However, at the end people laugh out of relief because the man was always a Kohen, and the shul still got a new roof.