The Eight Gates cross talk joke, why is it called the Eight Gates

"Eight-Fan Screen" is the abbreviation of Eight-Fan Screen. Screens were furniture placed by officials in the Qing Dynasty to block wind or serve as a barrier in the hall. They were usually made of hardwood frames and silk-framed cores, with eight screens in a row. Each screen was painted with a story about a historical figure. Or write poems and songs. "Eight Screens" uses the technique of "guankou". After A concisely introduces the main deeds of certain historical figures on the screen, he teases B for not being able to compare with the ancients, and then finds the joke. There are praises and criticisms in each passage, such as calling Xiang Yu, the overlord of Chu, a brave and foolhardy "hunger"; calling Zhang Fei during the Three Kingdoms of the Later Han Dynasty a "reckless man"; calling Lu Su, a doctor of Soochow during the Three Kingdoms period, a "reckless man". He called Miao Guangyi, the military advisor of Zhao Kuangyin, the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty, a "man of the rivers and lakes"; he called Zhou Yu and Kong Rong, who were young and promising during the Three Kingdoms period, and Sima Guang and Wen Yanbo of the Song Dynasty, "good boys"; he called the founder of the Tang Dynasty General Wei Chigong was called a "countryman"; Jiang Ziya, who assisted the Zhou Dynasty, was called a "fisherman"; Wang Zuo, Yue Fei's staff in the Song Dynasty, was called a "hard man". These characters are all from popular classical novels, and they are also images that storytelling artists talk about. Since the 1940s, when crosstalk actors perform "Eight Screens", due to time constraints, they can generally only choose from the characters of "muddleheads", "reckless people", "bitter people", "children", and "jianghu people". "Of these five kinds of stories, choose three to act out.

Actors who are good at this program include Zhang Jieyao and Xu Degui, Chen Zizhen and Guangquan, Gao Yufeng, Liu Baorui, Zhao Chuntian, etc. The Central People's Broadcasting Station has live performances of Liu Baorui and Guo Quanbao, Zhao Zhenduo and Zhao Shizhong Recording, this song is included in the crosstalk collection "The Three Kingdoms" published by Shanghai Culture Publishing House in 1957.