Laugh is a world language. People from different cultures all have jokes and today we will start a new series in our podcast about ancient Chinese jokes and hope you can laugh or smile about it.
One of the most famous book of jokes is called XiaoFu 笑府 by the author Feng Menglong 冯梦龙, who was a Chinese writer and poet of the Ming dynasty, between the year 1574 ~ 1646. We will tell two jokes about burglary today.
The first story says, there was a poor person who was “too generous”. He paid for people’s meals to make himself think he had a good life. One night, a burglar sneaked into his house and found nothing valuable. The burglar left and said, “what the heck. Nothing is here.” The poor person heard it and got some money under his bed sheet. He caught the burglar and gave him the money said, “I am sorry I didn’t know you came. Please don’t tell people I am poor.”
The second story says, a burglar sneaked into a poor family. He found nothing valuable but only some rice. The burglar put his nice clothes on the ground to wrap the rice. The poor person on the bed saw it and took the burglar’s clothes away and shouted “help! Thief!” The burglar replied, ” yeah. There is a thief. Where is my clothes?”
Mentioned:
笑府 XiaoFu
Chinese Mythology Podcast 