I've heard very few good jokes - as opposed to single lines, witty rhymes, etc - in China, and even fewer that weren't reskins of Western or Soviet jokes. But this one was new to me, and rather good.
"A group of local officials and business leaders are meeting in a provincial city to discuss whether some money should be spend on refurbishing an elementary school, or the local prison. The vote is leaning in favor of the elementary school, when one of them says "Gentlemen, let's be serious. Do any of us really expect to go back to school?"
It is a reskin - I first heard it in the 1970s, but set in Yugoslavia, with the choices an old people's home or a prison.
Posted by: chjh | June 03, 2012 at 02:14 PM
Doesn't the Yugoslav version miss, erm, the point of the joke? Or were old people's homes in a Yugoslav context only for the extremely indigent rather than a plausible destination for a minor local official?
Posted by: john b | June 05, 2012 at 03:32 AM