Des Bishop is Far out in the Far East
DES BISHOP has unfinished business in China. The stand-up comic, who is back in Ireland for two live shows at Vicar St), has extended his visa in China for another year.
His stand-up show, ‘Coming Home’, garnered impressive reviews at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe earlier this month. It explores his time in China, as depicted in the six-part documentary series broadcast on RTÉ television in the spring.
The New York-Irish comic was drawn to China for several reasons: a childhood obsession with kung fu movies, an interest in its culture that was piqued by a visit in 2004, and a desire to speak Mandarin with the Chinese who live in his old childhood neighbourhood in Queens.
Bishop also wanted to understand the country, given the rising fascination in the West with China’s growing economy, although he says it took him five years to get his TV documentary series airborne.
Since moving to China in early 2013, several things have surprised him. “The hospitality is the biggie. Chinese people in everyday life can be a little bit abrupt, a little bit rude. It’s just a cultural thing. It’s neither positive nor negative. Irish people tend to be almost overly friendly. Definitely the modernity, too — it’s much more modern than I was expecting. That shocked me.
“Going back, it’s the energy of everyday life that is its most attractive aspect. It’s a very different energy to the West. It’s hard to articulate — I’m not a physicist. It’s just a pace of life that is different to here,” Bishop says.
As to China’s perception of Ireland, Bishop says it is limited, and chiefly relates to the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the Riverdance phenomenon, which is hugely popular. “The fact that Cork has adopted the People’s Republic has not made it into their consciousness,” he quips.
One of the biggest myths we have in the West about China, he says, is that they are living under an oppressive regime. “I hate the Chinese government, to be honest, but in everyday life you don’t feel their presence. There are times when you will feel it — when you have to do bureaucratic things, or if you have a genuine problem and you’re not able to get your voice heard. In everyday life, you don’t feel that, so you’re not living under this yoke of oppression that I think some people think exists.
“And if you need to know about human rights in China, put the search term into the internet, because that is all you will see — stories about human rights abuses in China. It’s the most covered story in all of the Western media about China. But, obviously, China is a completely controlled media environment, so a person in Ireland would be more aware of human rights abuses in China over the last 18 months than I would.
“The presence of it exists, but you’re not aware of it in everyday life in China. None of my friends are thinking, ‘You can’t do that or we’ll be whipped away in a prison van’. It doesn’t feel like that at all.
“Other things: the place is full of people. That’s true, but there is space. A person from UCC said to me before I went that the only place in China that you find space is in your head. But at times you can find space, and their parks are nice.
“They are bad drivers. That I can tell you is true. They drive mental. I don’t know if that is genetic or cultural.”
Bishop has made interesting headway on Chinese television, having appeared in front of 5.5m people on the Chinese version of the TV dating show, Take Me Out. In a feat of linguistic endurance, he acquitted himself well, bantering away in Mandarin for the guts of half an hour. He also got the studio audience whooping along to his lively rendition of ‘Come Out Ye Black and Tans’. At 38, though, Bishop was a bit too old to woo any of the other contestants, being dismissed by one with the backhanded compliment that he was like “a cool uncle”.
The conventions of dating are different in China, he says.
“It’s just not as casual there. Dating is immediately a more serious thing. There’s no way around that. One-night stands exist, but they are not a big thing. In general, women are a bit more aware of ‘whether this has the potential to work out or not’. They interrogate you from the get-go about the suitability of the relationship. ‘What’s your job?’ ‘What’s your animal sign?’ They’re immediately concerned about age difference.”
Bishop says he biggest question is he got was whether he was going to stay in China, because the majority don’t want to emigrate. “Some people think a Chinese girl would be like, ‘Oh, yeah, brilliant — we can go and live a life in the West’, but, actually, that’s not the case. Most of them are very happy in their lives in China.”
They’re also not as prudish as they like to make out. “But they play that identity a lot more than we would be used to, nowadays, in the West. This concept of ‘We can’t do that, because that’s not acceptable behaviour’. They make a bigger deal about that. In the end, what you do in the bedroom stuff, it turns out, is more talk than action.
“However, it is a bigger thing, culturally, in China, to play at that ‘We’re more pure than you are’. Of course, ‘pure’ is bullshit. I don’t think it’s about purity at all; it’s just about control or shame, or whatever.
“They certainly would think of it in terms of ‘Is this suitable for marriage or not?’ They would think about that very quickly and wouldn’t be afraid to have that conversation. They don’t have as many relationships in their lives. They expect to be married much younger.”
Bishop says Chinese women start talking about marriage almost as soon as you start dating them.
“They have more questions about the future than you would be used to, like very early on, when you start talking to somebody. The type of stuff that would shock a Westerner: ‘Did you just ask me about marriage? Holy shit’. But it’s also completely normal for Chinese people — not even girls you’re dating, just random people — to ask you, ‘How much money do you make?’ These things are not taboo there.”
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