in this region. In the multi-language environment of Malaysia, "Malaysian Xiangsheng" became different from Xiangsheng in mainland China and Taiwan. Since Mandarin Chinese is not a mainstream language in Malaysia, there are few professional performers in Malaysia. Xiangsheng in North America In 1984, 19-year old Canadian comedian Mark Rowswell started learning Chinese at the University of Toronto. After graduating in 1988, he went on to study Xiangsheng at Peking University with a Chinese comedian and Xiangsheng master, Jiang Kun (姜昆). He started using the Chinese name 'Dashan' (大山), now a household name in China. Dashan has consistently improved his Chinese over thirty years, frequently appearing on national Chinese television. His career has consisted of a wide variety work, not just Xiangsheng, and in recent years he has gravitated more towards Western-style stand-up comedy in Chinese, with elements of Xiangsheng incorporated into the act. Dashan has served informally as a cultural ambassador, using his work to help bridge cultural gaps between Canada and China. In 2012, American comedian Jesse Appell, known as Ai Jiexi (艾杰西) in China, started on his journey with Xiangsheng. Originally from Boston, Massachusetts, Appell went to Brandeis University where he joined the Global China Connection (GCC) and regularly performed stand-up comedy. He went to China in September of 2012 to study Chinese at Tsinghua University as a Fulbright Scholar. There, he improved his Chinese and was awarded the Critical Language Enhancement Award (CLEA). As part of his Fulbright Scholarship, he studied Xiangsheng with a master of the craft, Ding Guangquan (丁广泉). Appell founded a comedy center, LaughBeijing, that hosted over 300 shows per year in Beijing from 2016 to 2020.Some of his work today also focuses on bringing the Western-style stand-up comedy to China. He sees himself as a cultural ambassador, combining his talents with the power of the Internet to help U.S.-China relations and bridge cultural gaps. As social commentary The small scale and popularity of Xiangsheng make it second only to word of mouth in reflecting popular concerns. Hou Baolin and others have said that Xiangsheng items are "works of comic nature which use satire and humour as their principal base. The cross talks use witty speech, bitter, ridiculous ridicule, in order to achieve the purpose of arrogant "big laugh" and entertaining people. Its earliest form was derived from the juggling of "Yuyou". In these jokes, artists often pinned their mockery and whipping against the