When one of China’s biggest stand-up comedians opened his show with a joke about the extraordinarily long rule of the country’s leader Xi Jinping, it drew a cheer, alongside a smattering of approving profanities.
“This is fire,” a man shouted in Mandarin.
Few in China would dare to joke about Xi, who has increasingly centralised power in his nearly 15 years in office.
But this was the National University of Singapore, where hundreds had packed into the auditorium, mostly Singaporean Chinese and those who had moved or were visiting from China.
And the young man on stage, Chizi, knew the risks.
In 2023, China banned him from performing in the country after a series of appearances abroad that touched on issues the government is particularly sensitive about, although there has never been an official statement saying why.
Chizi does not live in China anymore and his name, once hugely popular, is a whisper now.
“In China my face is treated like a sexual organ. It’s not something that can be freely shown or circulated,” he wrote in a recent Threads post after learning that a fan’s social media account was suspended because they had shared his photo.
After a hiatus, he returned to the stage in April, kicking off a tour spanning Tokyo, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, selling out every show.
At 30, Chizi, whose real name is Wang Yuechi, has been doing stand-up for more than 10 years. But this tour felt like his first “real piece”, he told the BBC in a sit-down interview the day after the show.
Many see his comeback as defiance, but he said, “I wanted to perform for people who speak Chinese, to introduce myself, showing them how I live, or think as someone who lived in China for 30 years.”
