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Is it true that Chinese people don't understand sarcasm or the use of it in their culture?

10 Answers
Clive Parkinson
The answer is obviously 'no,' but I think there might be something to this question, as I remember several Chinese-American friends having told me as much when we were growing up. My hypothesis is that they meant to say 'facetiousness' rather than sarcasm. 

I teach Shanghainese 18 year-olds classes on irony and satire, which they uniformly call "sarcasm" because the Chinese word 讽刺 is used for all three. My students definitely understand sarcasm-- barbed insults often formed by stating the opposite of what is meant.

However, Chinese students are not introduced to forms of irony wherein the purpose is not specifically to mock or lampoon something. This is not to say that Chinese culture has no history of it, but more that the humanities (including critical examinations of Chinese history and literature) are less emphasized in the Chinese education system relative to western ones. Specifically, it's possible (and probable) that one could graduate from an elite university without ever having studied literary irony. For perhaps obvious reasons, the ruling class don't particularly care to encourage it (there is now meant to now be a ban on making puns in broadcast communications).

I teach lessons on understanding Onion articles, and I don't believe there is any Chinese analogue to that sort of open-ended satire. It is the first time that my students have encountered anything like it, and they typically have trouble understanding why it exists (as, no doubt, many westerners would as well). Their question is typically "who exactly is this supposed to be mocking?", and they have trouble understanding that the author is encouraging the reader to ask certain questions rather than guiding them to ridicule someone. To be sure, there are significant cultural obstacles to understanding satire, but my students are unfamiliar not just with the references, but with the entire genre and its purpose. Another example is Body Ritual of the Nacirema, which contains few cultural references that Shanghai students wouldn't get, but which has no specific target. Most students get lost trying to work out who is meant to be the object of ridicule, but the purpose of the communication goes beyond that.

But aside from obscure literary styles, I think it *might* be the case that the Chinese tend to be less facetious than, say, the British, just as Americans tend to use less irreverent humor. Being facetious often means purposely using inappropriate diction or making extreme statements that one neither totally agrees nor disagrees with, with the purpose of calling attention to social norms that forbid taking those sorts of attitudes rather than lampooning an individual or institution. It's harder to understand than sarcasm because there is no object of ridicule and because the speaker intends neither what she says nor the exact opposite. At any rate, Chinese students are usually thrown off by facetiousness in English, as one needs to be fairly familiar with social taboos in order to find it funny.
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Feifei Wang
No. It is not true. There has been quite a few satire novels published since classical times. For example, 儒林外史 The Scholars (novel) was written in mid 18th century that was widely considered to be one of the most successful satire novels. More recent work include Lu Xun's many novels such as 阿Q正传The True Story of Ah Q and most of the novellas collected in "The Scream" are satires.

However, sarcasm and satires are very much like humor, they're extremely culture based. You'll have to immerse in the culture to understand their humor, sarcasm and satires. An American will not be able to understand Chinese humor, similarly a Chinese will not understand American humor. It's not to say Chinese (or Americans) are humorless or don't understand sarcasm, they just don't understand YOUR type of sarcasm without culture context.

For example, Donald Trump has been the butt of the joke in western liberal media, but for someone who don't know who Donald Trump is, who don't know what's the big deal with his hair, who don't watch the Apprentice, or aren't familiar with republicans and democrats, the joke would be very confusing for them.

(Try explain this to someone who never heard of Donald Trump).

A Chinese example would be:


Liang Mountain was having year end review meeting, Song Jiang was hosting. Lin Chong said, my grocery store didn't make any money. Lu Zhi Shen said, my diner suffered 100K lost in profit this year. Mr. Sun said, Brother, you need to give me 500K investment or all my brothels will go broke. Song Jiang wasn't happy. And then Li Kui rushed in and said: Boss, I suffered...

Song Jiang stood up and said: they suffer lost was understandable, you're a fucking highwayman, how could you suffered lost?!

We'll use this story to memorize Chinese toll road suffered over 1 trillion RMB lost in 2014. The little cat said: I have nothing to say...

Now to understand the joke, you need to know the story of Water Margin, you need to know who those people are (they're Robin Hood like vigilantes), you need to know the corruption of Chinese toll road system, and high way set up booth to charge people. You need to know the story is not just imply toll road corruption, it implies the entire government system is nothing but bunch of robbers and thieves with no accountability.

And if you need people to explain this, it's not funny anymore.

So NO. it's not that Chinese don't have sarcasm, it's YOU don't understand them.
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The reason why you think Chinese people don't "understand" sarcasm  is because you're making sarcastic remarks to them in a language (English, if I may guess) that they're not as famaliar with. We detect someone's sarcasm through many secondary cues, like the tone of their voice, their specific word choice, and cultural context of the conversation. These are things that are second nature for native speakers, but are difficult to grasp for non-native speakers. Having a working proficency of a language is not the same thing as having native fluency, and this is why some Chinese people who are not yet thoroughly fluent with English can understand the words you speak but not the humorous undertone.

This concept should be much easier to understand if you try studying a foreign language. You'll realize that it's quite difficult, and that even if you know the words you might still not fully comprehend the multitude of linguistic elements that go beyond grammar and vocabulary. In reality, Chinese people make sarcastic jokes or write satirical articles just as much as everyone else.
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Joseph Wong
To say you are wrong would be an understatement.  I think sarcasm is a universal language.  A few weeks ago, I saw this post on Facebook, as an American, I am also multilingual; I speak English, profanity, sarcasm, and shit.  
Chinese were known to speak multiple dialects and 拐彎子駡人 or 打仔駡街人 cussing in circles or cussing people by beating his/her own kids are both common practices. 
Chinese even turned it into an art using 偈後語 unfinished sentences.  One has to know the following sentences. 
瞎子拿報紙 - 你看 the blind holding the newspaper.  For you to see
問和尚借梳子-明知故犯 borrowing a comb from a monk.  Asking for trouble. 
脫衭子放屁-多此一舉 take off your pants to fart- wasted motion. 
Like Feifei said, many sarcasm are so imbedded in the Chinese language that one must be proficient to understand.  If you ask me, majority of American preferred the slap stick humor by the Three Stooges but few appreciate sacrasms presented by Dave Miller.   I like Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, and john Oliver better than SNL.   Humor is in the eyes of the be holders, race has nothing to do with it.
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Clearly not true.  Just read, listen, or watch Chinese comedy, or drama.  There's plenty of sarcasm in all forms: irony, satire, and facetiosuness.

What is true however, is that facetiousness is a marginally more difficult to express in Mandarin (can't speak for Cantonese).  Because it's a tonal language, you can't do it in the normal way you can in English by stressing the start of the word (imaginge a teenager saying this) "I'm SOOrry".  Chinese speakers only have the option of inseting and stressing the hyperbole, and often accompanied by lengthening the cadence: the equivalent of saying "I'm SOOOO VEEERY sorry".

It's also true that teenagers in China go through less of a rebellious phase, where they would use sarcasm and facetiousness as a weapon to express disagreement with others.  That's not causal though.
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Jeffrey Liang
No. Chinese use sarcasm. But Chinese sarcasm has a different flavor, so Chinese people and Western people are difficult to understand each other's sarcasm from plain translation. Similar situation also for humor. Both find other's humor too dry.
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Botao Jiang
One time I went to China to my once hometown, I was pretty much lost because of all the urban developments and was talking to the taxi driver in chinese. I had a long conversation and told him I just came back into the country and he asked "do you know the difference between the emperors of the past and the politicians today?" I said I don't. He said unlike the mayors here, the emperor actually cares about his kids (ie: his kid will become the next emperor so he has to hand off something positive), but the current mayors don't. Just look at all the nice walkways and streets, every mayor here will try to redecorate it to make more money and any deficit will not affect him after he leaves office. I told him that's wrong there is no difference, he is insulting the government and he will be arrested.
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