Translation sometimes leads to hilarity. Witness the Chinglish signs that native English-speaking travelers never seem to tire of. It goes both ways. Coca Cola's first attempt at Chinese branding led to a name that suggested customers "bite the wax tadpole".

More often, unfortunately, humor is lost in the translation. The tragedy deepens when the expat finds himself at a meal with strangers obligated to get to know each other. After a few glasses of beer or wine, it's joke time. The mind races from that dirty joke found in the morning's email to a trusty Schwarzenegger imitation. Nothing will do.

The guy who tells you the Chinese have a different sense of humor is a walking punch-line himself. OK, maybe TV and consumerism haven't yet whittled their sense of irony to the razor point found in many a jaded Westerner, but the rest of it - slapstick, toilet humor, innuendo, can be found wherever one hears laughter in China.

If you want to hear laughter at that dinner party, and you know neither dirty jokes nor your chopstick-walrus impression are entirely appropriate, here is some punnery [usually fail-safe for laughs in China] and some tried and true Chinese anecdotes. If you yourself want to laugh, go read the Onion. Or, you can practice your polite laughter [a requisite social skill] at each of the following:

There was a noisy wedding dinner taking up half of a restaurant.
In the other half sat some Western tourists. As the wedding couple hopped from table to table toasting their guests, the cheers of "GAN BEI!" got louder and louder. One of the Westerners seemed particularly upset as the couple got closer, yelling "GAN BEI!" over and over.

Finally, the irritated Westerner couldn't take it anymore. He stood up and shouted, "IF YOU CAN'T PAY, THEN LET ME PAY FOR YOU!"

There are three guys in a bar having a beer together - an American guy, a French guy, and a Chinese guy. They see a sexy waitress and comment on her good looks. They make a bet on who can get a date with her first.

The waitress overhears them, so she goes up to them and says, "Hey, I heard you talking about me. I like an intelligent guy, so let's see who can make the best sentence using the words 'liver' and 'cheese'."

So the American guy goes, "That's easy. I love liver and I hate cheese." The waitress shakes her head in disgust.

The French guy goes, "Well, I hate liver and I love cheese."

The waitress is like, "That's so stupid. That's the same thing!"

Then the Chinese guy steps up and puts his arm around the waitress' waist. "Liver alone, cheese mine!"

There was an engagement between a poor man and a rich girl. The man's family was afraid that the bride's family would not let her go through with the marriage. Spurred on by his family, one day the man kidnapped his bride-to-be. But, in a rush, he grabbed his fiancé's younger sister by mistake.

The girl's family rushed out of the house shouting, "You got the wrong one!"

However, the younger sister said," Don't listen to them. You got the right one. Run quickly!"

Wang Wei's mother was a devout Buddhist. She would recite the scriptures from morning to night.

One day, Wang was feeling cheeky. He called his mother from the other room while she was busy chanting the name of Buddha. His mother heard Wang calling her so she stopped to answer. However he kept on calling her.

"Mother!"

"What?"

"Mother!"

"What?"

"Mother!!"

"What!?"

Finally his mother lost her temper and shouted: "Stop it! Why do you keep calling me like that?"

Wang laughed and replied: "You got angry when I called you four times. Imagine how angry the Buddha is hearing you call his name thousands of times a day."

One day Simple Cai Ming went off to the market to buy rice. He lost the sack on the way, and went home to tell his wife.

His wife asked nervously, "So, what about the money?"

"Oh, don't worry. It's safe. I hid it in the bottom of the sack."

A grocer once had a daughter born to him. One day a friend of his made a match for the baby girl, and told him the future husband was only one year older than she was.

The grocer discussed this marriage in private with his wife. "Our daughter is just one; the boy is twice her age. When she is twenty, her husband will be forty," he said. "How can we marry off our daughter to such an old husband?"

His wife smiled and said, "You're really dumb. Our daughter is one now; in a year's time she'll be the same age as the boy, now won't she?"

The USA and China met for a debate, to decide which is more important - the sun or the moon. Each side presented its arguments and counter-arguments for days but they could not settle on the winner.

Finally on the 11th day of debating, the Americans defeated the Chinese. They concluded that it was the moon which was more important. They said, "The moon gives us light at night when it's dark, but the sun only gives us light during the day-when it's not necessary!!"