CHINESE SMILER

Evening Star, Issue 22382, 4 July 1936, Page 6

CHINESE SMILER

LONG TACK CAM DISCUSSES OCCIDENTAL HUMOUR A Chinaman with a sense of humour ? Ono might as well expect green turtle soup to have - been made of terrapin. One must not demand too many Western virtues of- the Oriental. Bret Harte, who rubbed a journalistic shoulder with the coolies of early California, has this to say of “ John Chinaman ’’:—“ The expression of the Chinese face in the aggregate is neither cheerful nor happy. . . . Whether it is only a modification of Turkish gravity . . * I cannot say. They seldom smile, and their laughter is of such an extraordinary ana sardonic nature—that to this day I am doubtful whether I ever saw a Chinaman laugh.” But then Bret Harte made a later confession that *’ his acquaintance with ‘ John Chinaman ’ has only been a series of weekly interviews involving the adjustment of washing accounts”. Anyhow, Long Tack Sam is the exception to prove our rule. His company of richly robed contortionists, jugglers, magicians, and tumblers cannot help exciting interest and wonder. But it is smiling, chaffing Long Tack Sam himself who wins the hearts —and the responsive laughter of his audience... For ho makes his act a .continuous'fusillade of jokes and quips, sotto voce imitations, parodies, ami grotesque foolery. He can pucker his face into the quizzical fussiness ot a Londoner as he speaks in the purest English of “ Piccadilly and Marylebone road.” Ho can broaden it into the placid good nature of a German when he calls, in the language of the Vaterland, for “ein-'glass wasser.” He is' droll. The audience recognises him at once as a man with an Occidental sense of humour. When an interviewer invaded the wings, behind the stage door, Mr Long Tack Sam’s act was just completed. He was engaged in giving his face what American ’schoolboys _ call a “rubdown,” He smiled mischievously from out of a smother of Turkish towelling, and started off in a startingly good English. *

“ Sense of humour, eh? I’m not so sure that 1 know what you mean by that phrase. But I do know how to laugh at everything that happens to me, whether it is good or bad, and I can always say something to make the next man laugh. I can see something funny in everything and everybody. Is tnat a sense of humour? Yes. Well, I’m glad to know it. Excuse me, mein heir, for my—what do you call it?—flippancy. You see, senor, I have travelled so much and have met so many people, and have had to laugh and poke fun' so often that I’m tired of this sense of humour, as you call it. Don’t you ever get tired of yours, monsieur? “Where did I learn all this? It is a dull ctory, not so full of smiles. Since seven years old 1 have been doing acrobatic turns in troupes and circuses the whole world over. I have travelled into almost everv land whoso language you have heard. I have learned, if nothing else, at least a few catch words from each of those languages, though, of course, I have studied French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish thoroughly. My desk, wherever I am, is piled so high with European magazines that_ my wife is always scolding at the litter. “ By the way, my wife is an Austrian. Which may account for my Western sense of humour, as' you name it, signor. True enough, through her I have came closer to the European ways than most of my race. But it was just as much of a revelation for my wife when she visited China lately to find that even the commonest rickshaw coolies could speak her beloved Deutch as well as she herself could.

And they all speak just as good an English. China of to-day is a very different thing from the old, sleeping, mysterious China of the- past. We have a splendid English newspaper, for instance. And, as for your sense of humour—we publish more than ope comic magazine almost equal to London ‘ Punch.’ And into our Chinese plays there is fast creeping a vein of rich farce, monsieur, which we never had before—and which would out-Paris the Parisians.

“ I never thought of playing a buffoon, mister, until I was in England. No, the Englishmen didn’t drive me to it. . . . You see, 1 was doing a juggling act, early at a performance. After me came one of those rough-and-tumble comedians who always make a point of imitating the act just, finished. This man used to poke all sorts of fun at me when it came his turn. I was anxious to have revenge on him—and one day they put on his act before trjinc. When I came out, therefore, 1 spent quarter of my turn in making impromptu imitations of this old English comedian. It took the house. The manager afterward told me that I must go on with this sort of foolery in every future performance. ‘ Why, those gags ari worth your whole act,’ he said. ‘ Never mind the juggling or the tricks. You’re a Chinese comedian—and that’s a good deal more imnortant.’ ”