Video: Meet Julien Gaudfroy, a French champion at Chinese cross talk
We’d been waiting for Danwei to post this video on a more GFW friendly site (if you want to see the original on Youtube, it’s up on Danwei.org) and they didn’t fail us! Awesome. Check out Julien Gaudfroy, a rare Western face in the Chinese tradition of cross talk (相声 xiang sheng)
Cross talk has its origins in the Ming Dynasty, but gradually became a form of comedic monologue during the Qing Dynasty. Later on, it took on the form of a dialogue and is now sometimes even performed in groups. You know Dashan (who doesn’t?)? He got his wicked famous by performing a cross talk skit at CCTV’s New Year Gala of 1989.
And now it looks like he’s got some competition in the form of Julien Gaudfroy, who starts the interview off doing a Chinese-language Yakko’s Nations of the World bit. Plus, he’s cute.
