China’s Biggest Comic Has a New Gig: Love Guru
This is the first of a three-part series on the changing norms of love and relationships in China. The rest of the series can be found here.
Even now, years into China’s stand-up comedy boom, no one commands an audience quite like Li Dan.
On the evening of Feb. 2, hundreds of thousands of Chinese put their vacation plans on pause to watch the king of Chinese stand-up’s latest livestream. But they weren’t tuning in for a laugh. Instead, Li was offering his advice on a far heavier subject: love. Relying on a unique mix of jokes and heartfelt advice, the 35-year-old Li has become perhaps the country’s unlikeliest relationship guru. (Li himself prefers “a girl’s digital best friend.”)
Li’s new act is just the latest turn in a career full of them. Born and raised in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, Li studied sociology at South China Agricultural University in the southern city of Guangzhou while slowly building a following on microblogging platform Weibo with his sharp, witty posts. After a brief flirtation with the corporate world, in 2013 he moved to Shanghai to pursue comedy full time.
What followed was a meteoric rise through the industry ranks. After landing a recurring role on the Shanghai-produced “Tonight ’80s Talk Show,” Li co-founded the stand-up studio Xiaoguo Culture in the city in 2014. It was with Xiaoguo that Li became a household name, his dry, often dark sense of humor helping make the company’s TV shows like “Roast!” and “Rock & Roast” nationwide hits.
In late 2010s China, Li’s bleakly funny take on life, known in Chinese as sang, or “depressive” humor, struck a nerve with a generation grappling with overwork, anxiety, and concerns about economic opportunity. But if his catchphrases — including “life isn’t worth it” and “I’m in my prime, but I don’t want to do anything” — spoke to a widespread desire to tune out and “lie flat,” Li himself seemed unstoppable. Appearing in and producing multiple hit TV programs, often simultaneously, he turned Xiaoguo into China’s biggest comedy collective and became one of the country’s best-known stars — all before the age of 30.
Then it all came screeching to a halt. In May 2023, a joke about the military told by a Xiaoguo comedian led to an official investigation, a nationwide ban on Xiaoguo performances, and widespread rumors that Li Dan had been blacklisted. When the dust settled in summer 2024, Li Dan reemerged — not onstage, but on the lifestyle app RedNote, better known in China as Xiaohongshu.
Declaring himself “completely done with comedy,” Li has spent the past year reinventing himself as one of China’s most popular livestreamers with an audience in the millions.
The key to his appeal? Emotional counseling with a dash of humor. While Li’s streams aren’t free of the product pitches so ubiquitous in China’s streaming industry, his approach could best be described as a “soft sell.” Rather than pitch the products directly, he has affiliate links scroll across the bottom of the screen while spending his time tackling questions relevant to RedNote’s largely female user base. Recent topics have included “What should I do if three men love me at the same time?” and “My cheapskate husband underpaid a sex worker — and she stole my makeup.”
The format is nothing new. I remember staying up late as a teenager in the ’90s to listen to late-night radio shows like “Accompany You Until Dawn,” whose host, Ye Sha, would have frank conversations with callers about love, heartbreak, and everything in between.
The success of “Accompany You Until Dawn” inspired a raft of similar programs across radio stations across China in the 1990s. Most were hosted by women, but the most famous was headed by Wan Feng, a middle-aged man who launched “Eden Mailbox” on Zhejiang Radio in 1996.
Wan’s candid, occasionally harsh style struck a chord with audiences and helped him stand out from his more soothing female counterparts. Known for his fiery temperament, he’d scold his callers with phrases like “Are you out of your mind?” or “This is what happens when you don’t read books or newspapers.” In one famous instance, he told a heartbroken woman: “You’re like a toad in a well, only seeing the person next to you. When you climb out one day and see better toads, you won’t care about this one anymore.”
Late-night advice shows declined with the rise of the internet, and hosts like Wan Feng gave way to bloggers like Lian Yue. Unlike Wan, Lian preferred a rational, analytical tone, and his blog “Ask Lian Yue” became a go-to resource for readers interested in dissecting the root of their emotional issues.
Now Li seems to be China’s new king of emotional advice. It’s a remarkable pivot, not least because of Li’s own checkered romantic history: The comedian’s high-profile relationship, reluctant marriage, and subsequent divorce are well-known in China, as is his general skepticism of matrimony.
Yet perhaps it is precisely Li’s cynicism about romance that makes him the perfect confidant for a generation increasingly ambivalent about the possibility of true love. Letters to Li often begin with pleas like, “Hurry up and snap me out of my stupid lovestruck mindset.” Each time, the screen floods with a frenzy of comments from Li’s audience, transforming what would otherwise be a highly charged venting session into a chaotic, carnivalesque spectacle.
For his part, Li has shown a deft touch, keeping the show light even in its heavier moments. “If I eventually break up with him, what would the past 10 years mean?” asked one woman on a recent show. Without hesitation, Li quipped, “It means you’re unlucky.” While reading aloud a letter from a viewer that began, “I am a very idealistic person when it comes to relationships,” he quickly interjected, “You’re doomed!”
In an era where love is no longer seen as essential or even important, Li’s irreverent approach offers viewers a much-needed outlet for their cynicism. Unlike his predecessors, Li does not gently reassure, angrily judge, or analyze. Instead, he mostly just laughs along. For his audience, the message is clear: When love — or life — cuts you to the core, the best remedy is a shrug and a smile.
(Header image: Visuals from VCG, reedited by Sixth Tone)
