Laughing down the ages : a brief history of humour in China

In recent years I and my co-editor Jessica Milner Davis have been in our ways pursuing the goal of love and truth, as we have worked on a multi-disciplinary study of Chinese humour. This has so far produced one volume: Humour in Chinese Life and Letters: Classical and Traditional Approaches.2 This volume covers classical and traditional aspects of humour, with contributions from scholars in literature, Chinese medicine and history. Volume two (forthcoming) takes up the story in the Republican period and follows through to the present day.3 It looks at humour in literature, media, film, cartoons, advertising, education, applied psychology, propaganda, politics and Internet humour, and concludes with reflections on humour in China from the comparative field.