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Abstract

This thesis examines Hong Kong-style stand-up comedy, dungduksiu 棟篤笑 through a case study of its most iconic performer, Dayo Wong Tze-Wah 黃子華. It argues that dungduksiu constitutes a highly localized form of stand-up that is distinct from, and historically parallel to, club comedy in Hong Kong. Whereas club comedy developed in restaurants, bars, and clubs among expatriates and amateurs, largely in English, dungduksiu emerged in legitimate theatres, in Cantonese, and is deeply embedded in Hong Kong’s colonial and postcolonial experience. Through close readings of Wong’s fourteen solo shows, supported by humour theory and scholarship on Hong Kong identity and coloniality, this thesis advances five main arguments. First, it differentiates stand-up comedy of Hong Kong from stand-up comedy in Hong Kong as two separated streams with different performers, venues, audiences, languages, and histories. Second, it shows how Wong’s career traces a shift from niche, market-independent social critic to mainstream cultural figure, arguing that this change broadened his audience but also required compromises in tone, content, and political sharpness. Third, it analyzes Wong’s comedic crafts, including stage persona, role-play, narrative structure, and utilization of the venue, to show how he engineers a distinctive form of Hong Kong stand-up comedy. Fourth, it demonstrates how Wong’s humour negotiates language hierarchies and shifting political “red lines,” tracing a trajectory from playful political irreverence in the 1990s to self-censorship and eventual retirement in 2018. Fifth, it explains how Wong transforms personal and collective crises, such as the 1997 handover and subsequent social conflicts, into acceptable “violations” that audiences can laugh at. The thesis concludes that the end of “Wong Tze Wah Dungduksiu” symbolizes not only the decline of a particular comedic form, but also the narrowing of public space for political humour in post–National Security Law Hong Kong.