“Right, that one.” Bai Youwei walked to the computer and typed in the question.
*A sheep was so hot it couldn’t stand the heat and went to shave its wool — after that it could never sleep again, because it had lost its fleece. Why is this joke funny?*
The clown: “…”
Bai Youwei finished typing, turned her head toward the supervisor, and asked it with meaningful calm, “Do you know the answer? Why is it funny?”
—
“Aha~ this is my specialty!” The clown supervisor said enthusiastically. “Because the sheep lost sleep — in Chinese, the word for ‘wool’ and the word for ‘sleep’ are homophones.”
It finished speaking, then suddenly had a revelation, looking over at Hans and his group. “Oh… so that’s why you were all laughing so awkwardly just now? Different linguistic contexts create differences in understanding? How about this — I’ll tell another joke that you can understand, to make up for the shortcoming just now…”
Bai Youwei cut it off: “No matter how many jokes you tell, it’s impossible to make people genuinely laugh, so you’d better save your efforts.”
The clown froze, balancing on its unicycle, staring at Bai Youwei in confusion.
A moment passed — perhaps because it had stopped too long — the wheel lost its balance, and its plump round body toppled to the ground, rolling several revolutions with a rumbling sound.
“Ouch ouch! Ouch ouch!” it cried out dramatically as it rolled, then with a bang it crashed into the wall, its body bouncing up like a rubber ball, and then it plopped down on its backside! Looked around in a panic!
Bai Youwei and Hans’s group watched it quietly.
Several seconds passed. The clown leapt furiously to its feet. “Why aren’t you laughing?!”
Its emotions grew agitated, its tone rapid and urgent: “Wasn’t what I just did funny? Wasn’t it hilarious? Why aren’t you laughing?! Why?!?!”
“You don’t understand what humor is at all.” Bai Youwei said unhurriedly. “I already told you just now — don’t waste time on this, because there’s no way we’ll actually laugh.”
“I don’t understand humor? How dare you say I don’t understand humor?!”
The clown seemed to be incensed — its face grew redder and redder, its head swelled larger and larger, until finally — crack! — its head snapped clean off! The neck was connected by a spring, like a prank jack-in-the-box, bouncing right up in front of Bai Youwei’s face!
“I am the funniest clown in the world! I know millions upon millions of jokes! I have a face that makes people double over with laughter! And a comically round and chubby body! How can you say I don’t understand humor?!”
Its head bounced back and forth in front of Bai Youwei, its tone sinister with an undercurrent of threat.
“Now laugh for me! Laugh!! LAUGH!!!”
Dim, Breil, and the others instinctively stepped back, afraid to be caught in the supervisor’s furious crossfire.
Hans narrowed his eyes and studied Bai Youwei, observing her reaction.
“Even if I laughed right now, it wouldn’t be because anything is funny.” Bai Youwei looked expressionlessly at the spring-attached clown head bouncing before her, and said without haste, “The essence of humor is schadenfreude. Humans enjoy watching others be embarrassed — stepping in something disgusting, or falling in the mud. The more wretched the person involved, the more foolish they look, the funnier it is, because the observer develops a subtle sense of superiority.
“But if that sense of superiority is destroyed, no joke placed before you will be funny.
“If A and B both step in the same mess, A has no superiority left — will A still find B laughable?
“Supervisor, in front of you, we will never have any sense of superiority. So no matter what you do or say, we will never truly laugh.
“Unless you become more foolish than us, weaker than us, lower than us, more humble than us… When that day comes, you won’t even need to tell jokes — your every word and action will make people laugh.”
The clown’s head stared fixedly at Bai Youwei.
Bai Youwei didn’t look at it. She lifted her gaze toward the five doors not far away, and smiled softly. “Ah… the answers are here.”
—