Chizi, Standup Comic Exiled in China, Wants to Be More Than Just ‘a Rebel Comedian’

Wide-shouldered and lanky, Chizi makes a dramatic impression. A few days before the show, he shaved his famous dreadlocks. But when he walked onstage in an oversize white T-shirt, a pair of black pants, and white and red Nike sneakers, the nerves were still visible. He forgot a few lines. He paused awkwardly a couple of times. Later, on social media, he would offer an apology for what he considered his poor performance. “I could do better,” he wrote. The audience didn’t seem to mind. The people chuckled, laughed and applauded.

He riffed mostly about his childhood — teachers who humiliated him for disrupting class, a mother who loved and hit him, being an outlier in a country that didn’t tolerate curiosity and individuality. The material was personal, even tender at moments. Political references were sprinkled throughout, but they were subtle.

Then, near the end of the set, he referred to Mr. Xi, China’s paramount leader, obliquely as “the husband of Peng Liyuan,” the folk singer who was once far more famous than her husband. Several women in front of me who had been laughing and clapping went suddenly still. Talking about Mr. Xi in an unfavorable fashion is the ultimate taboo in China. Reducing him to his domestic relationship in a public event was shocking.

After the show, we sat down to talk. He chose his words carefully. When I relayed a friend’s criticism — similar to others’ online — that he seemed to have pulled his punches on Xi Jinping, he laughed. “It’s not meant to satisfy you,” he said. The choice he made onstage was deliberate.

Free speech is a tool, he told me. The temptation is to use it simply because you can. “It’s exhilarating,” he said. But that, he added, can be a trap, and chasing approval is its own form of corruption, as dangerous to comedy as censorship itself.