What is the purpose of Chairman Mao's allusion to Sihanouk?

On the afternoon of July 7th, 1970, Mao Zedong met with Kaishan, general secretary of Lao People's Party, in the Great Hall of the People and told a fascinating but very difficult story. He said: There is an ancient book in China called "Opening the Face", which is a joke book of the Sui Dynasty. There is a joke that China lived in the Northern Dynasties and believed in Buddhism. Once a Buddhist meeting was held, a monk went to the altar to give a lecture. A man in the middle stood up and asked him, what animals does Sakyamuni usually ride when he goes out? The monk replied: Sakyamuni sat on the Lotus Platform at home and went out to ride a white elephant. The questioner said: No, you didn't understand the Buddhist scriptures at all. Sakyamuni rode a cow instead of an elephant when he went out. The Buddhist scriptures say: "strange sounds and strange faces." Doesn't "strange" mean riding an ox? The monk didn't laugh or cry when he heard this. He couldn't deal with this man. Say that finish, Mao Zedong smiled, and everyone here laughed.

However, this puzzled Zhang Er, the staff responsible for sorting out conversation record. He never understood what "strange sounds and looks" meant. In order to arrange conversation record in Mao Zedong as soon as possible, the staff came to Peking University the next day and found an old professor who was familiar with language and Buddhism, and asked him to find out what "strange sounds and strange looks" meant. The old professor said: "Opening the Face" is a collection of jokes written by Hou Bai, a person from Sui Dynasty. The original book has been lost. Nowadays, there are many kinds of Dunhuang papers and later generations' collections, and there are more than 100 paragraphs collected. According to Lu Xun's A Brief History of Chinese Novels, Tai Ping Guang Ji is widely quoted. He also said that the word "strange" in Strange Sounds can be understood as riding an ox, because the word "special" has two characters, one refers to a bull, and the jade piece says: special, the bull is also; First, it refers to cattle in general. According to Zhuo Fan's Schumann, a family gave birth to a dog, which seemed a little special at first. So "strange" means "riding an ox". But the "smiling face" here means that Sakyamuni looks very strange, but the questioner says that Sakyamuni is riding an ox. Isn't this interesting?

It is said that "Kai Yan Lu" is mostly a historical joke and seems to be a well-founded story. Almost every story is marked by the times, either Qin or Han, or Wei and Jin Dynasties, mostly Sui and Tang Dynasties. Thus, although Qi Yan Lu is a joke, it contains historical significance and has the flavor of unofficial history and Chen Shi.