3 . When A33, a theater in Beijing, hosted a new stand-up comedy show（脱口秀), to the surprise of the organizers, nearly 250 people turned up and laughed together. Six years ago, that would have been unbelievable. Indeed, there were even cases of shows having more performers than viewers.

Wan Da, one of the performers, said, “Many people are worried about the future of stand-up comedy, a genre (类型) that is very popular in the U.S. after its introduction in China. Can it adapt itself here? But as the results show, there is no need to worry. We have survived and carried on some of the best American traditions.”

Programs such as Rock& Roast, a comedy talk show competition, which are thought to help people reduce their pressure, drive audiences to offline performances for a real laugh. “Generally, our audiences are in the 20-35 age group, but recently some older people are reported to go to the theatre,” said Song Qiyu, a performer and founder of Beijing Comedy Center.

Compared to traditional Chinese comedy performances, the stand-up comedy has a lower bar as it doesn't require years of professional training. This allows everyone to take part. Work experience and personal observations of life are the sources of their inspiration. Different lives and jobs make the performances varied, giving them unique individual colors.

Joe Wong, a humorist from Jilin province, whose performance in Washington, D.C. in 2010 attracted much attention across China's social media, is happy to see the development of the industry in China. However, he has a warning, too: There is huge space for the genre in China, but we should be careful of growing too fast as the market still needs good works.

In China, many fresh college graduates join. Through their efforts, the industry will improve its standards and popularity as well as influence.

5 . Have you ever heard of the group Westlife? Maybe you have, but I’m sure many of you don’t know very much about it.

Westlife is an Irish boy band group, which was made up of 6 boys in the beginning and called IOU. The group quickly became popular with young people thanks to their song Swear It Again, which was at the top of the UK charts (排行榜) in April 1999.

Chinese fans got their first chance to see Westlife on March 6th, 2006 in Beijing. Although the four-member group has been singing pop for seven years, the young boys have all grown up and their songs are still very popular. When they performed in Beijing, Westlife released (发行) their new album Face to Face in China. Face to Face has been at the top of the British charts for a long time. The album’s most popular song You Raise Me Up mixes traditional Irish music with pop music.

Although hip-hop is quite popular among the young, Westlife has no plans to change. They said, “Hip-hop is for the young, but pop can be enjoyed by moms who are busy cooking meals and raising the kids.

6 . China’s TikTok, which has taken the world by storm, is working its magic in its home nation, too.

The Chinese version of TikTok, called Douyin, has amassed (累积) 400 million daily active users, parent company Byte Dance (字节跳动) revealed in its annual report this week. This is an impressive growth for the addictive video app, which had 250 million daily active users in January last year.

The report, which describes users’ behavior and trends, shows the cultural difference between China and the US, said Katherine Wu, an investor at New York-based firm Notation Capital.

Things that trend in these two countries are completely different. For example, knowledge-based content is extremely popular in China, but less so in the U.S. Also, those creators that did the most dance videos in China are users born in the 60s, while in the US, it seems that it’s mostly teenagers who are creating the dances.

Byte Dance claimed that Douyin has established itself as the largest knowledge, culture and art platform in China. 14.89 million “knowledge-based content videos” were shared on the app last year, it claimed. For example, one of the world’s most valued startups claimed that the number of users who posts videos about chemistry reached 130 million people last year. “On the art and culture front, videos related to those topics had 543.1 billion plays on Douyin last year.” it claimed.

Education has become a main use case for Byte Dance. TikTok, which is estimated to have earned more than $50 million last year, already counts educational content as one of the most consumed categories on its app across the world. The app launched an educational campaign in India last year, where it has amassed more than 200 million users.