Day 30: Hong Kong Humour vs. British Humour... Go!

Once in a while, I often wonder what the differences are between Hong Kong humour vs. British humour.

Hong Kong and Great Britain share about over 100 years together.  Britain established a trade harbour in Hong Kong, war happened, and the UK took over officially in 1898.  Not only goods were exchanged, culture were exchanged as well.  But not all things translate and are the same, like for example humour.

I think I had the privilege to watch a variety of different TV shows and movies growing up.  I watched a lot of American shows (since I grew up here) but my parents exposed me to Hong Kong shows as well as some British shows.  It was much later when I was in high school and college that I started watching British comedy as they were made available first on PBS and later BBC America.

Humour, to me, is a bit hard to separate in my head on the various types.  I think being exposed to mainly 3 cultures of comedy, my mind and head tends to laugh at anything, literally.  But humour can differ between each culture and plays on the current events, news, and trends in that country.

Much of British humour is sarcastic, dry and witty.  Deadpan is another word for it.  For example, someone could make a joke or say something but have no facial expression or tone changes in their speech.  The joke could be sarcastic or it could be a pun which has a "punch" to it if you get it.  Through that, you find the dry witty humour run across most genres of British comedy (situational, slapstick, absurd).

Hong Kong humour, however, is not always sarcastic, dry, nor witty. However, they have their own "witty" through their language and a humour called "mo lei tau".  Literally, it means, "have no heads or tails" and figuratively "nonsense talking" or "silly talking."  The comedy plays on their language and culture and trends.  I think maybe the best American sitcom to compare is Seinfeld.  Seinfeld is pretty much a "show about nothing".  A lot of Hong Kong's shows in some cases is a show about them talking about whatever and nothing at all.  Often times, my dad is left saying, "This show doesn't make any sense."

While they may share the same taste for tea and spices, it seems humour is very localized to their language and local cultures and trends.  However, Britain certainly has a greater influence around the world just because Great Britain has conquered a lot of countries around the world and spread English along the way.  Although Hong Kong may have borrowed a little bit of British "non-sense", I think in a lot of ways, there are no real similarities between the two.