Three Jokes From China

Merry Christmas!

1. "Thank Goodness"

There once was a fellow who was both poor and not very bright. To make ends meet, he once hired himself to the family of a man who was scheduled to be repeatedly beaten by a bamboo staff at the local yamen. This hiree agreed to stand in for the man sentenced to a beating. 

The family of the man sentenced first paid the hiree, the replacement for the beating, a nice sum of cash. 

With the cash on his person, the hiree entered the yamen, prepared to take his licks. However, before the beating commenced, he gave the yamen jailer entrusted to beat him all the cash, with the instructions to "go lightly" on him, and the jailer did so obligingly. 

Having now been beaten and now penniless, the man left the yamen and headed for the home of the family that had hired him in the first place. To their surprise, he got on his knees before them, kowtowing, repeating, "Thank you! Thank you! I'm so grateful to you!"

"Hold on!" said the startled head of the house. "What's this all about?"

"I'm a thousand percent grateful to you!" cried the beaten man. 

"How so?"

"Well," he replied, "if it hadn't been for the money you had given me, I'd have been beaten to death!"

2. "A Serious Tiger Match"

Out on the street, a man hard of hearing once heard the cry of a tofu seller hawking fresh tofu: "Doufu!" This gentleman, however, misheard the cry as "Douhu!" ("fight between tigers" or "a tiger match, " like a modern bullfight). 

He rubbed his hands together in delight and thought, "Hot diggity! A tiger fight! I've got to see this!" He turned around to the passers-by and cried out, "Hey, everybody? Did you not hear? There's a match between a man and a tiger or maybe one between two tigers!"

"Wow! Where?" asked someone.

"Show us where!" cried someone else. 

Just then a seller of hot steamed plain buns appeared, shouting, "Mantou!"

The hard-of-hearing fellow heard this as "To the south!" (nantou).

"Come on, everyone!" he said. "It must be this way, just south of here. He proceeded to lead a small gaggle of similarly bored people looking for excitement on a path headed south. 

On and on they walked until they reached the end of the path, a dead end in town where nothing was going on.

"Hey!" said one of the group. "Where's this tiger fight?"

"Yeah," said another, "there's nothing down here."

Not far away, a man was hawking garlic cloves: "Dasuan luo!"

The man with the hearing problems heard this as "Break it up!" or "Dismissed!"

"Oh, forget about it, everybody!" he said. "Looks like some killjoy already stopped the show and sent everyone away!"

3. "Tiger or Pussycat? Decide at Your Own Risk"

A rather vain, imperious county magistrate had taken up painting and had just completed a painting of a tiger, of which he was very proud. He hung it up in his office and called in a yamen runner to look at the painting.

"Well," said the magistrate, "what do you think?"

This runner, notorious for being a shameless toady, exclaimed, "Beautiful! For the life of me, Master, I swear this painting of a tiger is so lifelike that the animal looks ready to pounce off the paper!"

The magistrate, overjoyed, gave the runner ten silver coins, telling him, "Here, my good man!"

The next day, he called in another runner.

"What do you think of this painting?" he asked the runner.

"Oh . . . it's only a cat . . ." was the reply. 

"A cat? Just a cat?" roared the magistrate with anger. "Who do you think you are?!" He then stepped to the doorway and cried, "Send another runner in here at once!" And when a runner appeared on the double, the magistrate pointned to the runner already in his office and said, "See that man? Give him forty strokes with a bamboo rod!"

By now the word had gotten out that any runner who wanted to avoid trouble would have to speak very diplomatically with the magistrate if asked about his painting of a tiger. 

A third runner, one who refused to flatter but one who also desperately did not want to be beaten, was called in for his opinion on the now infamous painting. 

"So, what do you think of the painting you see hanging here?" asked the magistrate.

"I'm too afraid to say, Master," the runner replied. 

"Afraid? Afraid of what?" asked the magistrate. 

"Everyone is afraid of something, Master. I'm afraid of you."

"Oh, really now? What do you suppose I am afraid of, young man?"

"Well, Master," replied the runner, "you would be afraid of His Imperial Majesty."

"Very well. What would His Imperial Majesty be afraid of, then?"

"His Imperial Majesty would fear Heaven."

"And what would Heaven be afraid of?"

"Heaven would be afraid of a cloud."

"And what would a cloud fear?"

"A cloud would fear the wind."

"Uh huh. What would the wind fear?"

"The wind would fear a wall."

"Oh? And a wall? What would a wall be afraid of?"

"A wall would be afraid of a mouse for all the damage it could do."

"Aha. So what would a mouse then be afraid of?"

"Well, Master, a mouse would most certainly be afraid of what you painted in that picture."

The magistrate was left thunderstruck.

from
傳統笑話 [Traditional Jokes], Folk Humor and Joke Collection Team, eds.; N.p.: Green Apple Data Center; N.d. [Kindle Paperwhite]