Chinese comic’s earthquake jokes cause offence on disaster anniversary
- Comedy routine filmed last year condemned on social media for making fun of tragedy
- Performer apologises for disrespecting the dead after video clips go viral
A popular Chinese comedian has apologised after his jokes about some of the country’s most devastating earthquakes and the fate of wartime “comfort women” fell flat.
Video clips of performances by Zhang Yunlei from last year went viral on Sunday, the 11th anniversary of the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan, which left 87,000 people dead or missing.
In one clip, Zhang joked about three sisters getting married, each one in a part of China struck by huge natural disasters which left thousands of casualties, calling their survival the “ultimate challenge” in reference to a popular television show.
In other clips Zhang, 27, joked repeatedly that his comedy partner Yang Jiulang “went to comfort the army” – a term specifically referring to women who were abused as sex slaves during the Japanese occupation of China from 1937-45.
The videos upset many social media users, especially survivors of the earthquakes, with one writing on microblogging platform Weibo, “I am from one of those three places and I am so angry that I almost exploded. The audience laughed hard. What’s so funny about it? Try experiencing one earthquake and let’s see if you can laugh about it.”
“Joking with national disasters such as earthquakes and comfort women, do you have any conscience? I don’t understand why the audiences were laughing at his jokes,” wrote another.
