The Great LOL of China | The Huang Haibo smackdown incident

While performing Chinese stand-up gigs around Beijing this weekend, I repeatedly heard one name arise as the butt of all the new jokes on the comedy circuit: Huang Haibo.

Huang Haibo, this week’s comedic hot topic, is an award-winning actor who suffered a startlingly sudden and extremely public fall from grace last week when he was caught soliciting a prostitute and thrown in jail.

To add insult to injury, the news was announced not by an entertainment magazine but by the Beijing Public Security Bureau’s “Peaceful Beijing” police Weibo account. The post of his mug shot as well as that of his tall, lean, and recently makeup-deprived co-conspirator’s spread like wildfire around the internet.

Somewhere deep underground in a hidden lair covered in banners that read MAINTAIN A HARMONIOUS SOCIETY, a Public Security Bureau social media expert is pumping his fist, high-fiving his interns and shouting, “Score one for us!”

Whether Huang has acted his last role remains to be seen, but Chinese comedians have flung themselves, vulture-like, on the carrion of his previous branding image. Huang is most famous, ironically, for his role as a dashing, proper husband in the movie Let’s Get Married. He was given the title of "The Husband of The People" by Chinese microbloggers for his good-natured character. I can only wonder if he took his new title too seriously by attempting to fulfill his marital duties to “the people” one at a time.

But how has this news impacted the everyday people of China? To answer this overly broad question, I went straight to my lead consultant on these issues: my cleaning lady, Ms Li.