无厘头 (wú lí tóu) — Nonsense comedy — the absurdist
Nonsense comedy — the absurdist, anarchic humor style that Stephen Chow (周星驰) invented and made famous in Hong Kong cinema. It combines rapid-fire wordplay, surreal logic jumps, and deadpan delivery of completely irrational statements. The term is now used for any humor that is deliberately random, illogical, or chaotic in a funny way.
Example Usage
他的回答完全是无厘头，但我笑到停不下来。
His answer was complete nonsense, but I could not stop laughing.
Cultural Context
无厘头 originates from Cantonese slang meaning incoherent or pointless speech. Stephen Chow elevated it into a full comedic philosophy across films like Flirting Scholar and A Chinese Odyssey. It became the defining aesthetic of an entire generation of Chinese internet humor.
Category: internet-culture