Yaoyao Jiang: Stand-up Comedy Revives, but Why Is There No Room for Li Dan?
This article explores the reasons why, after surviving upheavals such as the House incident, China's stand-up comedy industry has fully revived, yet Li Dan, widely recognized as the industry's godfather, has failed to return to its center. By tracing the development history of stand-up comedy, the rise of Xiaoguo Culture, the tightening boundaries of censorship, and Li Dan's current situation, the analysis argues that while authorities permit the revival of stand-up comedy, they will never allow another godfather-level figure to emerge.
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Hello everyone, I'm Yaoyao Jiang, someone who loves thinking and values logic. In August 2026, a young man from Northeast China who graduated from a secondary vocational school and had worked as a hairdressing apprentice, photo studio assistant, and carpenter stood on the stage of the Season 3 finals of "Stand-Up Comedy and Friends." His name was Xiaoqi. After winning the championship, he thanked the audience for voting for the very first vocational school graduate champion on the stand-up comedy stage.
My vocational school was really great, you know? We were super inclusive, right? We thought as long as we paid tuition, we could go; teachers didn't treat us as students, but rather as clients, humbly asking every day what our needs were. The phrase teachers said the most was, "What on earth are you guys coming over here for?"
A week later, another stand-up comedy show, "King of Comedy Stand-Up Season" Season 3, also crowned its champion. Three years ago, comedian Li Haoshi, also known as House, delivered a punchline during his performance, which resulted in Xiaoguo Culture being fined over ten million yuan. Seeing this, only eight words flashed across my mind: Fine style of work, capable of winning battles. Today, both new shows have simultaneously reached their third seasons; Chinese stand-up comedy has not only been resurrected, but has also split into two. But strangely enough, Li Dan, widely recognized as the godfather of Chinese stand-up comedy variety shows, did not appear in either of them.
Back then, on the stage of "Rock & Roast," Li Dan held the revival tickets that allowed eliminated contestants to return to the competition. Today, the entire industry has received a golden revival card, so why hasn't Li Dan been resurrected along with it? Right?
Many people have also placed lots of strange labels on me, like being quite wise, humorous, and talented. Today, let's talk about Boss Dan of the stand-up comedy world, and why some people are afraid of him having anything to do with stand-up comedy ever again.
What do you think one should do when offending such a person? Should I adjust the distance next time, not saying such words to avoid having another person so easily offended? Or should I just ignore it and speak my mind regardless of you, and next time you sue our client, it'll hurt you even worse.
In 1964, in a nightclub in Greenwich Village, New York, comedian Lenny Bruce took the stage with a microphone, while several plainclothes police officers sat in the audience. These officers weren't there to listen to jokes; they were there to document what words he used, what sexual topics he discussed, and how he satirized religion and politics. The police didn't investigate him on grounds of political satire; the charge law enforcement handed them was performing an obscene show. Although the U.S. Constitution protected freedom of speech back then, obscene expression was not protected by the First Amendment. New York criminal law also prohibited so-called obscene, indecent, immoral, and impure performances on the grounds that such acts might corrupt youth and other audiences. The problem was, there was no clear boundary defining what constituted obscenity, and in the end, it was usually left to the police, prosecutors, and judges to decide.
Bruce had previously been arrested in multiple cities across the United States for improper language on stage. When he arrived in New York, the prosecutors sent plainclothes officers into the audience to secretly record two of his performances and transcribe his lines word for word. Their task was not to judge whether the jokes were funny, but to transform the words spoken on stage into formal evidence that could be presented in court. Even the nightclub owner who invited Bruce to perform was prosecuted along with him for allowing such a show. Police later walked into the courtroom and recited Bruce's performance sentence by sentence. Bruce was found guilty of obscene performance and died two years later bearing this criminal record. It was not until 2003 that New York State pardoned Bruce, calling this vindication—delayed by over thirty years—a reaffirmation of free speech.
Bruce's fate illustrated that stand-up comedy, from its inception including in the United States, has constantly been battling with police, courts, religious groups, television networks, and angry audiences over the boundaries of speech. Its core is a person standing before a crowd under their own name, publicly sharing their perspective on society, and thus continuously running into the same question: Who has the right to dictate what can be mocked?
In the early twenty-first century, this form of performance began to sporadically enter China, where people gave it an inaccurate translated name: "Tuokousxiu" (talk show). While traditional crosstalk actors usually have to fit into an established tradition governed by master-apprentice lineages, seniority, partners, and fundamental skills, stand-up comedy requires performers to speak as themselves, turning personal experiences and real-life observations into jokes. Its starting point can be as low as requiring just one person, one microphone, and a few minutes of their own life.
This society is actually very unfriendly to women. But have you noticed? If a woman has no money, people feel she lacks presence; but if she's too rich, they hold prejudices against her. Think about it: once a woman gets rich, doesn't she automatically acquire this title? "Rich woman" (Fùpó)—listen to that name, it sounds both old and rich.
Around 2010, Chen Lu, Hai Yuan, Si Wen, and others came into contact with English stand-up comedy brought by Hong Kong clubs in Shenzhen. In the early days, open mic sessions happened only once a week, with usually only ten or twenty people in the audience. Sometimes actors had to carry their own chairs, and after finishing their set, they would sit in the audience to make up the numbers for their fellow comedians behind them. The first time Chen Lu went on stage, she didn't get a single laugh; crushed by the setback, she didn't perform again for six months. Later, she went to Hong Kong to watch professional performers, only then realizing that an ordinary person doesn't need to play an emperor, a farmer, or a thief, nor do they need to fabricate bizarre plots—she only needed to clearly explain her work, marriage, and failures to potentially hit a chord with a room full of strangers.
In 2012, "Tonight 80's Talk Show" began broadcasting on Dragon TV. Hand it over to the 80s tonight. Wang Zijian stood at the front of the stage talking about housing prices, working overtime, dating and marriage, and social news. In the writing team behind him were two names he frequently mentioned: Dan Dan and Jianguo.
Hospitals in the UK decide who gets seen first based on the severity of the patient's condition. Earlier, Dan Dan and Jianguo went to the UK for fun, and while there, Dan caught a cold. Wang Jianguo was furious; he aggressively called the doctor over, "Doctor, come over here! Come over here!" The doctor was terrified. "Let me see, you're not letting my buddy see the doctor, right? You wait!" He went over and snapped Dan's arm to ninety degrees: "Now can my buddy get seen first?"
Audiences across the country first heard these two names, and only after some time did they realize that they were Li Dan and Wang Jianguo. Back then, Li Dan was not yet today's public figure with a shaved head and red face who says "human life isn't worth living." His most important job was hiding offstage, finding lines for others that could make national audiences burst into laughter.
Li Dan's real name is Li Ruichao. He studied sociology at South China Agricultural University, interned in the media, worked at advertising agencies, and wrote poetry, novels, and jokes online under the handle "Zichedan." After Wang Zijian saw his writing, he brought him into the writing team for "Tonight 80's Talk Show." Li Dan's later move to the front of the stage was not entirely because he craved stardom; TV shows needed a constant stream of new faces, and this unkempt, lazy-talking young man happened to form a sharp contrast with the traditional, upright image of TV hosts.
Today is the first recording. The first episode in Wuzhen, the theme is "de-labeling." Labels are indeed very annoying, but what Li Dan says most often is that his greatest skill is revising scripts for others.
Since 2014, Li Dan, together with Ye Feng, the chief director of "Tonight 80's Talk Show," and producer He Xi, co-founded Fun Factory (Xiaoguo Culture). At its inception, China did not yet have a mature stand-up comedy market. Comedians didn't know where to perform, audiences didn't know why they should buy tickets to watch a person talk, and platforms knew even less about how to turn this kind of performance into a show that could attract sponsorship. The first path chosen by Li Dan and others was to import a format from Western comedy that Chinese audiences could most easily understand: having celebrities roast each other's flaws.
In July 2016, the initial version of Roast! went online, with Zhou Jie sitting in the master seat, surrounded by several guests making fun of him. The show gained about 30 million views within three days, but suddenly disappeared from the platform afterwards. No public documents can be found explaining the regulatory reasons; nobody knows for sure which specific sentence caused it or which department ordered its removal. Three days were enough for Li Dan to understand that high traffic does not mean a program can survive.
Eight months later, Roast! was relaunched. The basic format remained, but the direction of offense had shifted. The main guest of the first episode was changed to Li Xiang, and the firepower mainly fell on her figure, her daughter, and her celebrity lifestyle. Later, she admitted that she was not entirely satisfied with this version, but the program survived safely, and its first season achieved over a billion views, which was excellent.
For years, the host had suffered from a receding hairline and had his job taken over by Xie Na. To turn this business into industrialized production, Li Dan and her team went to the United States to study Comedy Central's celebrity roast shows, bringing back a complete production method: celebrities confirm in advance what is acceptable, writers contribute collectively, actors repeatedly rehearse in gambling clubs, the platform is responsible for editing and gatekeeping, advertisers provide the funding, and finally, the offense is packaged into a sellable entertainment product.
The problem facing Li Dan at the time was straightforward: if they copied the satire on religion, the president, and public power found in European and American stand-up comedy, the Chinese version of the show might not even make it to a second episode. She had no choice but to shift the offense away from the center of power and toward celebrity romance, appearance, and the workplace—letting actors talk about why they cannot afford a home, why they do not want to go to work, why they are afraid of marriage, and why they pretend to be busy in front of their bosses. This path allowed talk shows to finally survive.
However, politics is never hidden solely in leaders' names and government documents; rent, overtime, forced marriage, educational backgrounds, and Lu Yu's years of unable-to-rise predicament are all hidden in daily life. When more and more actors put their own situations on stage, life itself becomes political.
In fact, employees lying flat is not scary; what is most terrifying is bosses messing around blindly.
Li Dan later repeatedly promoted a seemingly simple concept: anyone can do a five-minute talk show. It does not matter what school a person attended, which company they work for, or whether they had a teacher to guide them in; it only asks whether a person can write their own life into a paragraph and then finish speaking it in front of strangers for five minutes, which is enough for someone to complete their first public expression. In the past, they could only complain in rental apartments, at dinner tables, and in colleague chat groups; now, they must find an angle for their own experiences, organize their emotions into language, and then accept the instant judgment of a group of strangers. On the surface, Li Dan lowered the threshold for actors, but what was truly lowered was the threshold for ordinary people to enter the public space.
In 2021, Li Dan's talk show manual was published. It reads like a publicly published internal operational manual for the effect, discussing verbatim manuscripts, how to find topics from daily life, how the reading sessions work, and reminding creators not to sit in a room waiting for inspiration. Li Dan said that strategically, one can consider oneself an artist, but tactically, one must work continuously like a programmer, chef, and carpenter. More importantly, Li Dan proactively made the methods for training writers and actors public. He explained that he hoped more people would enter the industry, even if they eventually became competitors in the effect. This book broke down the craft that was originally locked in company meeting rooms into a set of steps that ordinary people can practice following.
The method for finding actors was similarly free of mystery. In 2015, nineteen-year-old Chi Zi went to a bar in Beijing to perform for the first time. A few months earlier, he was still staying at home, searching for Beijing talk show clubs on the internet to find the registration entrance. That day, he nervously finished his few minutes on stage, stepped down to drink a beverage, and a fair-skinned, tall guy walked over to ask for his WeChat, saying he could offer him a job writing talk show material for television programs. That person then introduced himself as Li Dan. At the time, Chi Zi did not even fully react; back then, there were no art school talent agencies and mature competitions to pick people for this industry. An unemployed youth with no resume and no master could only first prove in a bar that he could make a dozen people laugh. As for Li Dan, he could only sit in the audience show after show, judging from a stranger's few minutes of performance who might become the next person remembered by national audiences.
Everyone knows that I really, truly like Jay Chou, and I would tell the production team every day, please, can you invite Jay Chou just once? And the production team? They invited Wu Zongxian, they thought of Hou Peichen, and even invited Zhou Jie, but they simply could not get Jay Chou.
After a person was found, they still had to be trained on the table of the reading session. Actors and writers would read the verbatim manuscripts aloud, and the people in the room would use direct laughter to test where there was no laughter and where it needed to be rewritten, or which sentence was effective but did not belong to this actor and had to be removed. In the early days, many drafts were given final revisions by Chen Lu and Li Dan. After listening to a performance, Li Dan would sometimes directly dictate a rewrite, helping the actor find her own observations sentence by sentence.
This system is much like a content production line: open mics serve as experimental platforms, while variety shows are responsible for polishing the content, presenting new performers to a national audience. Short video clips expand the reach, and offline theaters convert that popularity into ticket sales. "Rock & Roast" first taught the audience what "roasting" is, and then "Rock & Roast" (the competition show) pushed writers who were once behind the scenes and newcomers who had been performing at open mics across the country to the forefront. Online programs generate traffic, and that traffic is funneled back to offline theaters, giving the next batch of newcomers a place to continue honing their craft.
An industry report stated that in 2017 alone, about 40,000 people began learning stand-up comedy, with about 600 becoming performers. A few years later, Li Dan said that there were only 460 performers in the country who could actually sell tickets, and he hoped that in the future, 40,000 people would be able to perform regularly. These people might be doctors, journalists, or programmers by day, but during those five minutes on stage, they are first and foremost business people, producers, and industry builders. They need more performers, more shows, and more audiences, with the goal of growing the business, not launching a political movement.
However, for a regime accustomed to controlling public expression, more and more people who were originally silent are learning to organize their own situations into language, and confirming through the laughter of others that their own predicament is not theirs alone. This is actually harder to manage than a celebrity's social media post.
Many of the first people to step onto the stage of "Rock & Roast" were from the urban new middle class. Take Hulan, for example: he graduated from Columbia University with a degree in actuarial science, worked as a programmer in the United States, and participated in startups after returning to China. He is highly educated, has a good income, and is familiar with the language of internet companies, yet he is extremely sensitive to the absurdity of so-called decent jobs. He talked about working in the U.S., where he clearly had no work to do but had to pretend to be busy, with his hands full of tasks. Later, he came into contact with performance and learned that this state has a professional term: "pantomime." He used load-bearing walls as a metaphor, saying that the company claimed only a few people were truly supporting the whole building, while most employees' tasks were just to make the office look busy. Suddenly, what everyone whispered in the breakroom was brought to the stage; beneath the experience of high-level white-collar workers, it might just be an exquisite packaging of meaningless labor.
Following him on stage was Zhao Xiaohui, who came from a completely different world. On a weekend in December 2019, Zhao Xiaohui flew from Guangzhou to Beijing, performing two shows in a row at 7:00 PM, with tickets selling out in ten minutes. At 1:00 PM the next day, she flew back to Guangzhou because she had to go to work at an auto factory on Monday. The variety show designed a blue jumpsuit for her, helping the audience remember the image of this factory worker at a glance. Zhao Xiaohui's father has worked on construction sites for years, and their conversations always revolve around the factory floor and the construction site, so she said their relationship is much like that of coworkers. Now, when we go home to eat, drink tea, and chat, we talk about our factory and their construction site. People say that a daughter is her father's lover from a past life, but I feel like I am my father's coworker from a past life.
In the past, coworkers were often just statistics in the news or objects waiting for care in mainstream sketches. But after Zhao Xiaohui stood on stage, workers began to tell their own stories in the first person, and they didn't need to be educated or managed by anyone first.
He Zhizhi's path to the stage was longer. She didn't have a high degree, worked on an assembly line for two years, and also did telemarketing. While watching a free open mic in Jinan, she heard the performers on stage openly joking about indecent professions, poverty, and appearance. He Zhizhi had always been unwilling to talk about the unattractive parts of herself, but that day she suddenly understood that these things could not only be said out loud but could also make people laugh.
"I feel like I've become old and greasy, which is terrifying! I discovered that when I'm drunk and chatting with people, I've started to like using the phrase 'back in the day.'"
In November 2018, she arrived in Shanghai with 10,000 yuan. To practice those five minutes that could sell tickets, she ran over 1,000 open mics in over a year. She lived in the northern suburbs of the city, and every time she came out of the subway station, she could see signs prohibiting the capture of wild animals. It took twenty subway stops to get to the city center for performances, and she only earned 1,600 yuan a month from stand-up; after taxes, she was left with 1,400. In the quietest times, there were only three or four people in the audience, yet she still had to finish the jokes she had prepared.
Later, Li Dan came to watch her perform and said he hadn't laughed that happily in a year. He Zhizhi thus gained the opportunity to participate in "Rock & Roast." She told the national audience about things that were hard to talk about in the past, like living at the end of the subway line, having no money, and not being good-looking enough. After the show ended, she finally moved from the edge of the city to the inner ring.
Niaoniao brought yet another kind of predicament. She studied engineering as an undergraduate and entered the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University for her master's degree. After graduation, she worked as a freelance screenwriter, writing for clients in a rented room, and later returned to Hohhot to work in a public institution, gaining the stable life that many envied, yet she still couldn't find a place to express herself.
When Niaoniao first performed at an open mic, there was almost no laughter in those three minutes, and she even forgot her lines in the middle. After being discouraged, she didn't go on stage for a year. When she returned the second time, she began to talk about her appearance anxiety and social phobia. She later described that when the audience laughed, she felt that everyone had not only accepted her punchlines but also accepted her appearance, her views, and her way of expression.
"Happy grievances, more than five minutes." A beautiful wish, but most people live over twenty thousand days in a lifetime, so five minutes is only one in 5.76 millionths of that. What if a blessing is too conservative?
Then it would be better not to bless at all. She had excellent grades, attended prestigious schools, and obtained a stable job inside the system. She showed those similarly well-educated audience members a seemingly entirely correct life path that could provide a stable and comfortable life, yet not necessarily leave an outlet for the frustration and restlessness in their hearts. In 2020, Yang Li used the phrase "so ordinary yet so confident" to describe the relationship between the sexes in her eyes. A punchline that originally lasted only a few seconds quickly turned into a nationwide debate. Some believed she accurately voiced observations long accumulated by women, while others reported her to regulatory departments for provoking gender antagonism. Later, brand advertisements she participated in were even pulled due to controversy. The laughter of stand-up comedy thus crossed beyond the theater, becoming a tool for different groups to fight over interpretive power.
What I fear the most is the New Year, because you will definitely encounter that kind of situation where you are pressured to get married.
You are my mom, and it is a very special way of pressuring me into marriage.
After returning home, right in the middle of eating, he would suddenly stop and start sizing me up.
And after looking, he would suddenly come over, pat my head, and tell me: "Yang Li, you have to believe in your suspicious..."
Yang Li did not talk about political power, yet gender, marriage, and the workplace still divided camps and invited snitching. Meanwhile, the professions and social classes represented on stage continued to expand. Wang Yan held a guitar singing about not wanting to fight for shared bikes because he simply didn't want to rush to the company to revise PPTs, suddenly representing tech-giant programmers and senior white-collar workers; Zhao Xiaohui came from an automobile factory, and Zhi came from assembly lines and urban margins. Later, impoverished performers began talking about outsourcing, low wages, flat-sharing, and educational discrimination; the food delivery courier Nangua brought delivery life onto the stage. By 2020, Xiao Qi, who had graduated from a vocational secondary school, won the national show's championship, while those sitting in the audience were not a group of people ready to engage in political activities at any moment.
An audience report from 2018 showed that the core audience of stand-up comedy was predominantly young people aged 18 to 29, including many professionals such as managers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and doctors. Nearly half had a monthly income exceeding 10,000 yuan, and over 60 percent had watched offline shows. They were the group in Chinese cities most likely to be labeled as enjoying a peaceful life or being sophisticated egoists. These people spent money to enter the theater simply wanting to unwind after work, but by the end, they discovered that programmers, auto factory employees, Peking University masters, impoverished young people from out of town, and women pressured to marry were all talking about the exact same world. Hard work does not necessarily lead to upward mobility; diplomas do not necessarily buy freedom; a respectable job may merely be another form of wear and tear. Officials could explain each person's failure separately as a lack of ability, a character flaw, or making the wrong choice, yet stand-up comedy made millions of viewers realize at the exact same punchline: if people across different professions, different education levels, and different cities all encounter similar problems, then perhaps it is not just an individual's problem.
In season two, viewers definitely hope it will be better than season one, right?
We naturally also hope that you won't harbor such hopes. In 2016, Roast was pulled just three days after going online—that was the first alarm. The second was the snitching following Yang Li's rise to fame, which exposed another layer of risk: a single line, traveling from the recording studio to online platforms, then cut into a ten-odd-second clip in short videos, stripped of context to gain a brand-new headline, and finally delivered by someone who felt offended right before the regulatory authorities. The higher the efficiency of spreading jokes, the higher the efficiency of spreading snitch reports. Platforms not only had to pass pre-broadcast censorship, but also had to guard against a second round of censorship that could be initiated by any mobile phone after the show aired.
The third alarm occurred during the Chinese national football team special in 2021. On March 14, Roast Season 5 aired its sports special. In the first half, former national football captain Fan Zhiyi sat on stage poking fun at Zhou Qi, Guo Ailun, and the Chinese men's basketball team's defeat, saying...
Go ahead and scold Zhou Qi—what could they possibly achieve to warrant Chinese football coming to save them? For many years, Chinese football had always been at the very bottom of the nationwide mockery food chain. This time, the former national footballer, whom everyone had ridiculed, picked up the microphone, and it was his turn to satirize Chinese basketball. Ordinary audiences found it immensely satisfying, but strong backlash erupted within sports circles. Some criticized the athletes and actors for using national team performance to generate online traffic and damaging the national team's image. The second half of the sports special had already been recorded at the time, and promotional trailers had already been released; basketball players like Zhou Qi and Guo Ailun were originally supposed to roast Chinese football in return. However, on March 21, the scheduled broadcast day, the show's official account suddenly announced that there was insufficient editing time, and subsequently skipped that episode entirely. The Chinese Basketball Association later denied filing a complaint, and no regulatory decision could be found in public records. A show that was already recorded and promoted was simply swallowed up by "insufficient editing time."
Fan Zhiyi's first half was not pulled down, but the second half never appeared. This drew a boundary much clearer than celebrity privacy. Roasting an athlete's mistake could be packaged as entertainment, but once the nationwide audience's laughter embarrassed the national team, the sports associations, and the entire system all together, the platform had to recalculate the cost.
By 2022, Fun Factory began actively aligning itself with the main theme. In June of that year, before the pandemic controls had ended, Li Dan planned and hosted "What to Do! Stand-Up Comedy Special." Nine comedians formed an editorial team, visiting hospitals, police squads, and other workplaces to conduct interviews, turning the experiences of these practitioners into stand-up comedy routines. "True Heroes" invited anti-fraud police, SWAT police, traffic police, and firefighters; "Listen to the Doctor" brought on cardiologists as well as Dr. Zhong Ming and others who had participated in critical care treatment during the Fengcheng period in Wuhan. Mao Buyi, who had studied nursing, also took the stage to talk about procedures like "three checks and seven verifications." An art form skilled at deconstructing authority began spreading contrast and medical knowledge, telling inspiring stories of police, firefighters, and doctors. After experiencing the national football team controversy and the Yang Li controversy, Fun Factory
This time, the topic chosen could be considered the safest possible. Yet even so, Li Dan still did not give up that line: "Everyone can perform for five minutes, so what to do?" The show applied this sentence directly to working professionals: doctors, nurses, police officers, and firefighters were no longer merely observed and described by comedians; they could also pick up their own microphones. Fun Factory had tried hard to prove it could be tamed, but in the end, what caused the explosion was a story about two dogs chasing a squirrel.
In the twelve... they were at the top of the food chain. Watching them for the first time made me feel like I wasn't watching a stand-up show, but the filming site of Animal Planet. Over those two days, I watched them chase a squirrel, shooting out like artillery shells. Normally, when you see some dogs, you might think they look fierce, but seeing these two dogs, those words came to mind, and eight large characters flashed in my heart: "Fine conduct, able to win battles." An analogy that originally existed for just a few seconds in a theater, once removed from its context, rapidly transformed from whether the punchline was funny into whether the actor was insulting the People's Liberation Army.
On March 11, 2013, shortly after taking office, Xi Jinping, in his capacity as General Secretary of the CCP Central Committee and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, proposed the military strengthening goal for the new era at a plenary meeting of the PLA delegation: to build a people's army that obeys the Party's command, is able to win battles, and maintains fine conduct. He also stated that obeying the Party's command is the soul, being able to win battles is the core, and maintaining fine conduct is the guarantee. Thereafter, this phrasing entered military propaganda and was incorporated into Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military. House extracted the latter two of the three requirements proposed by Xi Jinping, swapped their order, and applied them to two wild dogs chasing a squirrel. The official announcement only stated that the performance severely insulted the people's army, without explicitly writing that it insulted Xi Jinping. However, who personally proposed this political slogan and whose political authority it was bound to is no secret in China. Therefore, this punchline touched not only the honor of the military, but also the Party's absolute leadership over the military and Xi Jinping's own political authority.
On May 15, Fun Factory announced the indefinite suspension of House's subsequent performing career, and the Beijing cultural law enforcement authorities also opened an investigation following netizen reports. On May 17, Beijing authorities determined that the actor willfully altered the approved performance content, resulting in scenes that severely insulted the people's army. The company was fined over 13.35 million yuan, with over 1.32 million yuan in illegal gains confiscated, totaling over 14.67 million yuan, and all its performances in Beijing were indefinitely suspended. Fun Factory
first terminated its labor contract and artist agency contract with House, and then announced that the senior management team and related business teams would undergo suspension, review, and salary reductions as punishment. The company required management, staff, and actors to undergo rectification education, demanding that everyone act with fear and reverence in their hearts
and clear direction in their actions. Meanwhile, responsibility spread beyond the company: Shanghai's cultural and tourism authorities held talks with executives, immediately suspending all of Fun Factory's performances in Shanghai. Fun Factory subsequently announced the cancellation of all offline performances nationwide and processed ticket refunds. Beijing police launched an investigation into House, and the China Association of Performing Arts called on member units to boycott him professionally. Stand-up comedy shows in many regions were affected. The administrative measures in Beijing and Shanghai, the self-announced nationwide suspension by the company, the disappearance of online shows, and the risk avoidance by theaters across various regions combined together were enough to bring this company's core business to a halt.
After House's contract was terminated, responsibility traced upward from a single actor on stage along the contract and management chain to business teams, senior executives, and the company itself, before spreading outward to theater organizers and other actors. The so-called joint responsibility meant making people who had never spoken the line suffer the consequences together, requiring companies to preemptively prevent any political associations an actor might trigger. The problem is that the fundamental method of stand-up comedy and crosstalk is to suddenly connect two things that were never meant to be put together—actors drag grand slogans into daily life and attach solemn language to embarrassing experiences. House applying Xi Jinping's military strengthening slogan to two wild dogs was his personal crossing of the line, and he used precisely this method. Even if Fun Factory audited the transcripts ten thousand times, it could not predict what associations an actor might have while standing on stage. Open mic spots require testing new punchlines, and mature actors will temporarily change words based on the laughter from the previous second. The more actors and the more shows there are, the more real life enters the stage, making it impossible to completely prevent similar political accidents.
After the controversy, a New Yorker journalist watched a show on the second floor of a Shanghai shopping mall. A camera was set up on the theater's back wall. The host first reminded everyone that they were just here to laugh and not to think too much, and then mimicked a snitch saying that this comedian was going to prison, which made the audience laugh. Everyone knew that comedians would be recorded, audience members could report them, and regulatory authorities might conduct spot checks—here, "anyone can perform five minutes of stand-up comedy" turned into its exact opposite. In the past, the more comedians there were, the more new stories Xiaoguo got; now, with every additional person who speaks, the company has to guard against one more joke that hasn't even been uttered yet. After the House incident, comedians and production teams scattered to different theaters, platforms were closed, and new setups were formed, but Li Dan never returned.
Li Dan did not begin to consider stepping back only after that performance by House. In February 2022, more than a year before the incident, he had already resigned from his position as a director of Xiaoguo, though he still held about 4.58% of the company's shares at the time. However, stepping down from the board did not mean a complete severing of ties. After the incident occurred, Li Dan remained a shareholder of Xiaoguo and was still seen by audience nationwide as the core content creator of this production system. Xiaoguo subsequently announced disciplinary action against its senior management team and relevant business teams, but did not disclose the list. In August 2024, Entertainment Capital, citing sources familiar with the matter, reported that after the storm, Li Dan also assumed joint management responsibility, and obstacles remained to his return to variety shows. Li Dan's subsequent public trajectory aligns perfectly with this news, with the most noticeable change appearing on Weibo.
On May 14, 2023, the day after House's performance and the eve of the storm's full outbreak, Li Dan posted a "hahahaha" video on Weibo, captioned "My law of conservation of energy in 5 Ha." After that, his Weibo stopped updating. Netizens kept asking whether Rock & Roast would still be available, but he never answered. However, Li Dan did not disappear from the internet—one look and you could tell he was well-read.
"But this is my personal—probably from reading too many books. My pessimistic estimate is that it's very likely from reading too much Xiaohongshu (RedNote)..." He continued to update Xiaohongshu (RedNote) on average every three to four days, with content mainly consisting of books, travel, and strolling diaries. Weibo used to be his public square for promoting variety shows and participating in public topics, whereas Xiaohongshu (RedNote) retained a private space for reading books and living everyday life; what fell silent was his public identity bound to Xiaoguo Culture and stand-up comedy.
On February 8, 2024, 270 days after his last Weibo post, Li Dan launched his personal podcast on Xiaoyuzhou, with each episode talking only about the New Year, reaching middle age, and not doing subtraction in life. His show description read that podcasting made him feel that distant yet anonymous intimacy of the early internet again: "I seem to be not so Li Dan anymore." In March of the same year, he posted a product selection video for a convenience store on Xiaohongshu (RedNote), and announced its opening in May. In the livestream room, Li Dan read letters from viewers, talked about family, love, and middle-age anxiety, while selling daily necessities on the side. He once again became a popular content creator, but it no longer had anything to do with stand-up comedy.
It was not until August 29, 2024—a full 473 days after May 14, 2023—that Li Dan's Weibo was updated again. The content was a podcast audio clip discussing pediatric hospice care and death, unrelated to the House event, Xiaoguo Culture, or the two stand-up comedy shows that had just been revived. In the months that followed, his Weibo remained focused on podcasts. On December 27, he retweeted a post with a tone close to his past self, saying that his podcast played a role that was hard to evaluate. He still had no connection to Xiaoguo, nor did he announce a return to stand-up comedy. He didn't talk about Xiaoguo, didn't appear on stand-up comedy variety shows, and no longer organized new talent. Xiaoguo's original footprint was shattered, with theaters in many places closing or changing names, and actors and production staff flowing to other institutions. In 2024, Tencent launched Stand-up Comedy and Their Friends, while iQiyi launched King of Comedy Solo Season...
Yang Li, Rock, Wang Jianguo, and others, along with the original production teams, entered the two separate shows. Season 6 of Rock & Roast never returned; instead, it was split into two titles, two platforms, and two production teams.
Li Dan's explanation for this was very relaxed. In 2024, he said during a livestream that he heard both shows were wonderful, so he wouldn't join in the fun. He admitted that he had helped old friends edit scripts for a time, but emphasized that it was purely out of friendship and that he no longer wanted to do this at all. Comedians, writers, and production experience have all returned—why is it that Li Dan alone has not returned to sit at the center of the stage?
By 2026, the two explanations of "no opportunity" and "total ban" have both become untenable. Stand-up comedy shows on both platforms have already moved to their third seasons, and the recovery of the offline market speaks even louder. In 2024, Shanghai had over 15,000 stand-up comedy performances, national performances grew by about 50% compared to the previous year, and box office revenue also grew by nearly 50%. In the first half of 2025, stand-up comedy box office revenue more than doubled year-on-year. This industry no longer relies on Xiaoguo as its sole outlet, yet it is still able to discover newcomers, and Xiaoguo has not completely vanished either. In 2024, the company's CEO Zhang Jie said that a single season of a stand-up comedy variety show had 59 groups of contestants from various professions, and different social sentiments actively seek stand-up comedy as an outlet. He described today's mode of production using "more prudent content control, stricter security prevention and control, and more conscious value guidance," and admitted that the team walks on thin ice when facing controversial content. Li Dan himself also returned to the public space. In July 2025, Sina News launched "Follow Each Other" hosted by him, with guests including Wang Meng, Jordan Chan, Li Juan, Joey Wong, and He Xiaopeng. The show is back, but the organizational center that originally operated around Li Dan has been dismantled. The actors, screenwriters, and production forces have been scattered across two platforms, while content boundaries are firmly guarded by review teams and regulatory authorities.
Guo Degang's influence primarily comes from what he says standing on stage, whereas Li Dan's most important influence took place backstage. He discovered newcomers, revised scripts, designed competition formats, trained creators, and used platforms to transmit the voices of countless ordinary people to all parts of the country. Guo Degang's danger lies in what he might say, while Li Dan's danger lies in his enabling more and more people to learn how to roast their personal lives and this society. Programmers, workers, delivery riders, graduates from prestigious universities, and technical school students each speaking about their own lives were originally just different parts of society's chorus, but once put onto the same stage by Li, it could become a grand chorus that makes the authorities uneasy. Therefore, Chinese stand-up comedy has resurrected. However, why can't Li Dan, who personally turned it into a phenomenal variety show, resurrect along with it? What he once accomplished—discovering newcomers, training performers, and delivering tens of thousands of five-minute acts to audiences nationwide—is precisely what he is not allowed to do again. A Li Dan who hosts interviews, does podcasts, and livestreams sales can exist, but a Li Dan who sits back in the center of the industry and continues to decide who gets on stage cannot. This line of work can continue to have stars, but it can no longer have a godfather. This is the condition for the resurrection of Chinese stand-up comedy: it must be without Li Dan.
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This brief mention reflects the logical progression of my thoughts. See you next time.