29
Xiaoping.' The second said, 'I'm here because I opposed Deng Xiaoping.' The two turned to the third who piped up, 'I am Deng Xiaoping.' Deng was, of course, incarcerated for a spell during the Cultural Revolution.
Generations of Chinese have endured hard lives and they frequently surprise Westerners by laughing at things which are construed in the West as horrible and cruel (Bonavia, 1980:59). 'Blood and guts' at the cinema are examples, although a nervous giggle is perhaps a better description than an outright laugh. Use of this 'safety valve' not only rejuvenates the mind and body but also diffuses anger. Humour and laughter help relieve stress and tension and the immune functions which they bring into being can sometimes help one get out of a trying, embarrassing or difficult situation.
You will sometimes see a Chinese who has been jaywalking, and has had a close shave with a car, or someone who drops his camera, grinning, or even giving a mild laugh. This reaction provides an escape mechanism. A giggle can make the serious seem ‘unserious' and bring about counterproductive results. Vittachi, the Hong Kong comic, has pointed out to the author that it is by no means confined to Chinese. Other Asians, such as Vietnamese, use 'laughter' to express embarrassment. One not infrequently sees bafflement (or even anger) on the face of a Westerner who tells the Hanoi custom officer that his ticket has been stolen, only to see the officer break into a nervous giggle.
In fact, the practice is not even purely Asian. The author recalls during World War Two when even British conscripts learned to laugh at the 'horrific' in order to adjust to the situation. If you could go into battle singing the song, 'Hurrah for the Next Man to Die!' you were better able to shrug off death and less likely to go 'shell happy.' Humour acts as a kind of release and can be borne out of pain. Sigmund Freud wrote a dull paper entitled, 'Jokes and their relation to the unconscious,' in which he stated that humorous laughter was a kind of catharsis, a release of tension that returns the body and mind to a state of homeostasis or equilibrium after stress (Freud, 1960).
The fact that humour can be born out of pain gives rise to the saying: 'I have migraine at the moment and everything seems funny in a peculiar (mirthless) sort of way.'