Hou Baolin

Hou Baolin was a leading Chinese xiangsheng performer whose career helped shape the modern development of comic dialogue. Trained first in Peking Opera, he later studied xiangsheng under Zhu Kuoquan and performed for two decades with Guo Qiru. He also revised traditional scripts, promoted cleaner language, pursued xiangsheng theory, and wrote roughly 30 scripts, including *Marriage and Superstition* and *Opera and Dialect*.