When the Chinese standup comedian Chizi decided this year to go on tour for the first time since he got into trouble with his government three years ago, he was certain about just one thing: Some people would come to the shows — in Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore — to see a “rebel comedian.”

今年决定举办自三年前招惹政府以来的首次巡演时，中国脱口秀演员池子能确定的只有一件事：在日本、台湾、马来西亚和新加坡的演出，有些人是为看一位“反贼喜剧演员”而来。

He knew he could play up that image, pulling jokes from a folder on his phone labeled “Cannot Say” — material sure to enrage Chinese censors. He had done exactly that during a tour in Canada and the United States three years earlier, when he mocked the country’s censorship and the prejudices faced by ethnic minorities.

他知道自己可以利用这个形象，从手机上一个标着“不能讲”的文件夹里翻出一些笑话——这些段子肯定会激怒中国的审查者。三年前他在加拿大和美国的巡演中就是这么做的，当时他嘲讽了国家的审查制度以及少数民族面临的偏见。

Or he could make the show more personal, introducing himself to a new audience of Mandarin Chinese speakers in other parts of Asia. Steering away from the obviously political was a choice he knew would not please members of the Chinese diaspora who are critical of the current government.

或者，他可以让演出更个人化，向亚洲其他地区的普通话观众介绍自己。他知道避开明显的政治内容会让那些批评现政府的海外华人不满意。

His North America tour in 2023 had cost him. All references to him were deleted from the Chinese internet, he became toxic in his industry and he was unable to practice his craft in China, losing his core audience and his income. Now doing shows in total freedom, he finds himself resisting a different sort of constraint: the expectation that he will perform the role of rebel.

2023年的北美巡演让他付出了代价。中国互联网上所有关于他的内容都被删除，业内人人对他避之不及，他无法在中国从事自己的工作，失去了核心观众和收入。然而，如今在完全自由的环境中表演，他却发现自己在抵抗另一种束缚：人们期望他扮演“反贼”的角色。

It is an expectation that offends his sense of artistic integrity. He is not an ideologue. He wants to tell stories and let people think for themselves rather than imposing a conclusion. Doing anything else, he said, would be the mirror image of the Chinese propaganda he grew up with.

这种期望是对他的艺术操守的侵犯。他不是一个意识形态分子。他想讲故事，让人们自己思考，而不是强加结论。他说，否则就只是把他从小耳濡目染的中国宣传换个说法而已。

He just wants to be a comedian. For a Chinese performer, that turns out to be a radical enough ambition.

他只想做一个喜剧演员。对于一名中国表演者来说，这原来已经是一个足够激进的抱负。

Laughter as an Outlet

笑作为出口

在东京的演出前，池子在后台把塑料水瓶当成麦克风练习段子。

Chizi, a nickname that means “pond,” was born in 1995 in central Henan Province. His real name is Wang Yuechi. The given name Yuechi comes from a Chinese idiom: Never go beyond prescribed limits. His parents chose it hoping he would do the opposite.

池子1995年出生于河南中部，本名王越池。“越池”这个名字来自一个中文成语：不越雷池。父母给他取这个名字，希望他做相反的事。

His family moved to Beijing when he was 8 years old, hoping to provide better schools and opportunities for their son. He was the kind of restless, funny kid who made his classmates laugh and frequently got into trouble for it.

八岁时，他全家搬到北京，希望为他提供更好的学校和机会。他是那种坐不住、爱逗乐的孩子，常惹同学笑，也因此经常惹麻烦。

As a teenager, he watched American standup online — George Carlin, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock — and thought China could never produce anything like it. “It’s too sharp, too dangerous,” he said. But in 2015, he came across an advertisement for a small outfit holding open-mic standup nights. For his first performance, he scribbled jokes on bits of paper. He was a natural.

青少年时期，他在网上观看美国脱口秀——乔治·卡林、戴夫·夏佩尔、克里斯·洛克——并认为中国永远无法产生类似的东西。“太尖锐、太危险了，”他说。但2015年，他看到一则小型开放麦脱口秀活动的广告。第一次表演时，他在纸片上潦草写下笑话。他天生适合干这个。

In its early years in China, standup comedy was performed exclusively in small bars with little interference. Comics even made fun of the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, Chizi told me. In the late 2010s, as the government tightened controls over personal expression — banning male earrings, tattoos and flamboyant hair colors on TV — standup comedy, somewhat paradoxically, became one of the most popular forms of entertainment.

在中国早期，脱口秀只在小酒吧演出，几乎不受干扰。池子告诉我，喜剧演员甚至拿中国领导人习近平开玩笑。在2010年代后期，随着政府加强对个人表达的控制——禁止男艺人在电视上戴耳环、纹身和夸张发色，脱口秀却有些矛盾地成为最受欢迎的娱乐形式之一。

“The more pressure there is, the more people need laughter as an outlet,” Chizi said.

“越高压越需要笑作为出口，”池子说。

In 2017, the same year his mother died from brain cancer, Chizi became a regular on “Roast,” a new television show featuring comics that attracted nearly 1.4 billion views during its first season.

2017年——他母亲因脑癌去世的那一年，池子成为新电视节目《吐槽大会》的常规演员，该节目第一季获得了近14亿观看量。

But as standup gained popularity, government oversight arrived with it. Writers had to submit their material to censors and were not allowed to go off script. Taboo topics included national leaders, homosexuality, gambling, poverty and the pandemic.

但随着脱口秀的流行，政府监管也随之而来。作者必须向审查者提交素材，不能即兴发挥。禁忌话题包括国家领导人、同性恋、赌博、贫困和疫情。

池子建了一个“不能讲”的文件夹；里面都是他写下但永远无法在中国表演的笑话。

Chizi responded by writing down everything he wasn’t allowed to say. Over time, this became his “Cannot Say” folder: jokes he had written but could never perform in China.

池子的回应是写下所有他不被允许说的内容。随着时间推移，这成了他的“不能讲”文件夹：他写下但永远无法在中国表演的笑话。

But he found other ways to publicly defy the system. He mailed his social media followers physical copies of the Chinese Constitution with the clause protecting freedom of speech highlighted. When regulators issued an official document labeling his dreadlocks “strange,” he daringly posted a screenshot on Weibo, a popular social media platform, and wore the most ridiculous hats he could find at subsequent shows, turning the censorship itself into the joke.

但他找到了其他公开反抗体制的方式。他给社交媒体粉丝邮寄中国宪法的实体副本，并在保护言论自由的条款上做了高亮。当监管机构发布官方文件将他的脏辫标记为“奇装异服”时，他大胆地在微博上发布截图，并在随后的演出中戴上他能找到的最荒谬的帽子，把审查本身变成了笑话。

At 23, at the height of his fame, Chizi quit “Roast.” The work, he said, had grown too commercial for his tastes, and the studio that had signed him wanted control of his social media account, calling the things he said “too dangerous.”

23岁时，池子在名气最盛时退出了《吐槽大会》。他说，这份工作变得太商业化，而签他的工作室想要控制他的社交媒体账号，认为他说的话“太危险”。

Then came the North America tour and the ban. He returned to China, keeping a low profile, but, unable to perform, he left at the end of 2024 in self-imposed exile.

随后是北美巡演和禁令。他回到中国，保持低调，但由于无法表演，他在2024年底选择自我放逐。

The industry he left behind has been facing an existential crisis as censorship has intensified. In mid-2023, Beijing fined Chizi’s former employer around $2 million for a joke that compared China’s military to stray dogs. A few months ago, a female standup comedian joked on Weibo that she felt fortunate not to have a husband and children she would have to cook for while she was sick with a fever. Her account was suspended for “causing anxiety about marriage and childbirth” and for “provoking gender antagonism.”

他离开的行业正因审查加剧面临生存危机。2023年年中，北京对池子的前雇主处以1400万元罚款，原因是其中一个笑话将中国军队比作流浪狗。几个月前，一位女脱口秀演员在微博上开玩笑说，她生病发烧时幸好没有丈夫和孩子需要她做饭。她的账号因“引发婚姻生育焦虑”和“挑起性别对立”被封。

A Nervous Return

紧张的回归

购票观众在东京新宿文化会馆外排队等待池子的首场演出。现场大约来了1000人。一些观众表示，他们是来听那些在中国无法表达的心声的。

For the past year and a half, Chizi has been traveling the world and not doing much, which his savings make possible, he said. He’s learning to meditate and cook — his favorite dish is eggs and tomatoes — and tracks what is and isn’t allowed on Chinese social media. He said he was still enraged by injustice back home. Now he posts photos of clouds on Instagram.

过去一年半，池子一直在环游世界，没做什么正事，他说他的积蓄允许他这么做。他在学习冥想和做饭（他最喜欢西红柿炒蛋），并关注中国社交媒体上什么被允许、什么不被允许。他说，他仍然对国内的不公感到愤怒。现在他在Instagram上发云的照片。

His return to the stage began with a plan to do only one show, in Taiwan. Then word spread. Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore were added to the tour. To his surprise, all but one show sold out. (He now has shows planned for North America and Australia.)

他这次重返舞台始于一个在台湾演出一场的计划。后来消息传开。东京、吉隆坡和新加坡被加入巡演。令他惊讶的是，除了一个场地外，所有演出都售罄。（他现在计划在北美和澳大利亚举办演出。）

Half an hour before his first show, in front of 1,000 people, in Tokyo in April, he was still rewriting jokes. He had not tested his material at an open mic. Rather, he practiced in front of an imaginary audience, holding a plastic bottle as a microphone. He had no idea whether his jokes would land.

4月在东京，即将面对1000名观众进行首场演出前半小时，他还在改段子。他没有在开放麦测试过素材，而是对着想象中的观众练习，拿塑料瓶当麦克风。他不知道自己的笑话是否会受欢迎。

The people who stood in line outside the theater had come to hear a rebel. “If he’s not saying things that can’t be said, why would I come?” said Jason Li, a 39-year-old I.T. worker who moved to Japan from China in 2022. “Otherwise, I might as well watch Chinese television.” Most of the people I interviewed, like Mr. Li, were Chinese immigrants who recently moved to Japan, part of a wave leaving China after the pandemic. Backstage, Chizi stretched, squatted and jumped to calm his nerves.

在剧院外排队的人是来听“反贼”的。“如果他不说那些不能说的东西，我为什么要来？”39岁的IT从业者杰森·李说，他2022年从中国移居日本。“不然我还不如看中国电视。”我采访的大多数人都是李先生这样疫情后离开中国的移民，刚搬到日本不久。在后台，池子用拉伸、下蹲、跳跃来平复紧张。

Wide-shouldered and lanky, Chizi makes a dramatic impression. A few days before the show, he shaved his famous dreadlocks. But when he walked onstage in an oversize white T-shirt, a pair of black pants, and white and red Nike sneakers, the nerves were still visible. He forgot a few lines. He paused awkwardly a couple of times. Later, on social media, he would offer an apology for what he considered his poor performance. “I could do better,” he wrote. The audience didn’t seem to mind. The people chuckled, laughed and applauded.

肩宽瘦高的池子有种戏剧化的形象。演出前几天，他剃掉了著名的脏辫。但当他穿着超大白色T恤、黑色裤子和白红相间的Nike球鞋走上舞台时，紧张依然可见。他忘了几句台词，有几次尴尬地停顿。后来，他在社交媒体上为他认为的糟糕表现道歉。“我可以做得更好，”他写道。观众似乎并不在意。人们轻笑、大笑并鼓掌。

He riffed mostly about his childhood — teachers who humiliated him for disrupting class, a mother who loved and hit him, being an outlier in a country that didn’t tolerate curiosity and individuality. The material was personal, even tender at moments. Political references were sprinkled throughout, but they were subtle.

他主要即兴谈论童年——羞辱他扰乱课堂的老师、爱他也打他的母亲、在一个不容忍好奇心和个性的国家里做一个异类。素材很个人化，甚至有些时刻很温柔。政治指涉贯穿其中，但都很含蓄。

Then, near the end of the set, he referred to Mr. Xi, China’s paramount leader, obliquely as “the husband of Peng Liyuan,” the folk singer who was once far more famous than her husband. Several women in front of me who had been laughing and clapping went suddenly still. Talking about Mr. Xi in an unfavorable fashion is the ultimate taboo in China. Reducing him to his domestic relationship in a public event was shocking.

然后，在演出接近尾声时，他间接地把中国最高领导人习近平称为“彭丽媛的丈夫”——那位曾比丈夫更出名的民歌歌手。我前排的几位女性原本一直在笑和鼓掌，突然安静下来。在中国，以负面的方式谈论习近平是终极禁忌。在公开场合把他简化为一种家庭成员关系是惊人的。

After the show, we sat down to talk. He chose his words carefully. When I relayed a friend’s criticism — similar to others’ online — that he seemed to have pulled his punches on Xi Jinping, he laughed. “It’s not meant to satisfy you,” he said. The choice he made onstage was deliberate.

演出结束后，我们坐下来聊天。他的措辞很谨慎。当我转述一位朋友的批评——类似网上其他人的看法——说他在习近平的问题上有所保留时，他笑了。“就是为了让你不满足，”他说。他在台上的选择是故意的。

Free speech is a tool, he told me. The temptation is to use it simply because you can. “It’s exhilarating,” he said. But that, he added, can be a trap, and chasing approval is its own form of corruption, as dangerous to comedy as censorship itself.

他告诉我，言论自由是一种工具。诱惑在于，仅仅因为你可以，你就会去用它。“这很令人兴奋，”他说。但他补充说，这可能是个陷阱，追逐认可本身就是一种腐化，对喜剧的危险程度不亚于审查本身。

“It’s easy to be a rebel,” he said. “It’s much harder to be a good comedian.”

“当反贼很简单，”他说。“当好的喜剧演员不容易。”

An Artful Detour

绕弯的魅力

The next morning, we met for breakfast and talked again about why he didn’t make more political jokes the night before. Geography played a role, he admitted. Standup depends on shared context. Audiences in the tour’s cities do not always share the same references, he said, but they would understand childhood, family and school.

第二天早上，我们一起吃早餐，再次谈论他前一晚为什么没有讲更多政治笑话。他承认，地理位置起了作用。脱口秀依赖共享语境。他说，巡演城市里的观众并不总是都能理解某个典故，但他们都能理解童年、家庭和学校。

He also thought his reference to Mr. Xi merely as a husband was an artful detour, more sophisticated than calling out his name.

他还认为，他仅仅把习近平称为丈夫的指涉是一种巧妙的绕弯，比直接点名更精妙。

Since his childhood, he always liked a detour. If he needed to get from A to B, he said, “I’d always climb to the highest spot, jump down, hop over a few railings, spin around and only then get where I was going.”

他从小就喜欢“绕弯”。他说，如果他需要从A到B，“我总是先爬到最高的地方，跳下来，翻过几个栏杆，转几圈，然后才到达目的地。”

“It’s simply more fun,” he said.

“这样更好玩，”他说。

He liked the comedian Trevor Noah, whose stories about his mother and his South African childhood reveal themselves as a portrait of a society. As he was working on the material for the tour, he discovered that his own childhood stories, too, kept emerging with sharp edges, textured with pain, anger and absurdity. He hoped the audience would feel that, too.

他喜欢喜剧演员特雷弗·诺亚，他的关于母亲和南非童年的故事最终勾勒出一幅社会的画像。在为这次巡演准备素材时，他发现自己的童年故事也不断带着尖锐的棱角浮现出来，充满痛苦、愤怒和荒诞。他希望观众也能感受到这一点。

I asked Chizi whether he considered himself an exile. “Absolutely,” he said. He knew he could not return to China if he didn’t censor himself.

我问池子是否认为自己是流亡者。“绝对是，”他说。他知道如果不自我审查，他就无法回到中国。

After the show in Tokyo, I talked to a member of the audience, Ms. Zhou, a 59-year-old freelance translator who left China in late 2023, around the time Chizi was barred. She told me that she laughed harder than she had in years at the performance, but she also felt something heavier beneath it.

东京演出结束后，我和一位姓周的女性观众交谈。她59岁，是一名自由职业译者，2023年底离开中国，差不多就是池子被禁的时候。她告诉我，她很多年没有笑得这么厉害了，但也感受到更沉重的东西。

“Freedom feels so good,” she blurted out as she walked out the theater. Then she caught herself. That this kind of enjoyment could happen only outside China, she said, left her fighting back tears.

“自由感觉太好了，”她走出剧院时脱口而出。然后她顿住了。这种享受只能在中国之外发生，她强忍着眼泪说。