Translations: Enthusiasts Fear Tightening Grip on Crosstalk Stage Comedy

Translations: Enthusiasts Fear Tightening Grip on Crosstalk Stage Comedy

Two recent WeChat posts express concern about mounting official interference in 相声 xiàngsheng, the traditional northern-Chinese form of fast-paced stage comedy known in English as crosstalk. These anxieties are acute, but not new. David Moser wrote in 2009, for example, that, "The Chinese government has systematically stifled crosstalk by bowdlerizing its tradition, restricting its natural growth and evolution, and reducing the form to a sycopha…