There are described the main historical stages of formation of the Chinese variety humorous genre “xiangsheng”. There are revealed the linguostylistic peculiarities of humorous texts at each stage. There is traced the correlation of social and political situation in China and the character of humorous texts of the “xiangsheng” genre.

There is described the development and the varieties, found out the constituent signs of the Chinese comic genre xiangsheng. There are analyzed the main mechanisms of comic effect creating in the researched genre: ridiculing the dialect differences, hieroglyphic humour, tone play, allusion use.