Chinese people aren't funny, at least according to a survey of university students in Hong Kong and on the mainland. Associate Professor Yue Xiaodong of City University, who conducted the poll, found that there is a cultural ambivalence among Chinese towards humour.
Asked to rate the importance of humour, the Chinese undergraduates valued it in general but had a significantly lower assessment of their own sense of humour.
The students were also asked to identify the key attributes of humour and of the Chinese character - and the results showed virtually no overlap. The study was recently published in the International Journal of Humour Research.
'Core personality traits of the Chinese are different than, say, those of Americans, who associate humour with creativity,' Yue says. 'With the Chinese, there is no such connection.'
Yet humour and laughter has have long been thought to promote good psychological and physiological health, and have been used as forms of therapy both in Western and Chinese medicine.
The earliest forms of humour therapy can be found in the ancient Chinese medical text Huangdi Neijing, which recommends the use of comedy or clowning to treat patients.
Recently, scientists at Oxford University presented a study on the analgesic effect of laughter. Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar led a series of experiments that measured the pain threshold of people after they watched 15 minutes of a video. Those who watched slapstick comedy such as Mr Bean could endure a higher level of pain than those who watched a golf instruction video.