This is a truly unique form of expression, using jokes as a medium to paint a vivid, realistic scroll of local customs and human conditions. Cold jokes, puns, sketch comedy, and satire are used to equally mock everything. People with physical disabilities, the ignorant and arrogant, adulterers, pedantic scholars, common folk, government officials, wealthy merchants, all matters related to sex, and even Confucianism and Taoist immortals, are all made into jokes, gently pinched and quietly mocked. The atmosphere of the Qing Dynasty's street society permeates through these short jokes, encompassing the wretched human nature, ignorance, poverty, and the cunning that combines them in a person, as straightforward and essential as eating, in the clumsy directness seen in the eyes of both men and women. Reading it brings a wonderful feeling, a mixture of all flavors, breaking myths, and broadening horizons.
