The Xiangsheng language, rich in puns and allusions, is delivered in a rapid, bantering style, typically in the Tianjin dialect (or in Mandarin Chinese with a strong northern accent).

[3][4] One Canadian student of Xiangsheng, Mark Rowswell, who uses the stage name of Dashan, has said that the closest English equivalent is "Who's on First?

There are three major sources of Xiangsheng: Beijing Tianqiao, Tianjin Quanyechang, and the Nanjing Confucius Temple.

Originally a performer of Ba Jiao Gu (drum-song) (Chinese: 八角鼓; pinyin: bā jiǎo gǔ), Zhang eventually switched to doing imitations and telling humorous stories.

Previously seen as relatively low-class street performing, Xiangsheng became regarded as a proletarian art form.

Xiangsheng entered a period of decline in the 1990s, caused largely by increased official sensitivity towards political and social satire following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, as well as the lack of performance venues outside of sanitized state-run television programming.

[7] Guo has been credited with renewing interest among young millennial audiences, who found Xiangsheng to be boring and didactic.

Guo's rise to fame, while representing a very traditionalist movement, pitted him against more mainstream, establishment performers, such as Jiang Kun.

In April 1988, Feng Yugang and Song Shaoqing (Chinese: 宋少卿) formed Comedians Workshop, which aimed to merge theater with Xiangsheng.

As early as the Qing Dynasty, storytellers from China brought Xiangsheng to South Guangdong and Hong Kong.

After Hong Kong was ceded as a British colony,[9] the development of Xiangsheng entered a unique period of localization.

In 1967, Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) was created, and the variety show Enjoy Yourself Tonight was launched.

Feng Xiang (Chinese: 冯翔), Bai Yan, and Lu Ding performed Xiangsheng in this region.

In 1984, 19-year-old Canadian comedian Mark Rowswell started learning Chinese at the University of Toronto.

[16][17][18] In 2012, American comedian Jesse Appell, known as Ai Jiexi (艾杰西) in China, started on his journey with Xiangsheng.

[19] Originally from Boston, Massachusetts, Appell went to Brandeis University where he joined the Global China Connection (GCC) and regularly performed stand-up comedy.

[21] As part of his Fulbright Scholarship, he studied Xiangsheng with a master of the craft, Ding Guangquan (丁广泉).

[22] Appell founded a comedy center, LaughBeijing, that hosted over 300 shows per year in Beijing from 2016 to 2020.

Hou Baolin and others have said that Xiangsheng items are "works of comic nature which use satire and humor as their principal base.