A Chinese Audience’s Reaction To The Joke Of An American

The late Dr. Felson was an American professor in Radiology. He had embarked on lecture circuits in almost every state and many countries in the world. When he was at the university hospital in Beijing, he decided to break the ice by first telling a joke.

After delivering the first line of his joke, he waited for the host radiologist to do the translation. Instead of doing the translating, the host signaled Dr. Felson to continue speaking. He delivered the second line and waited. Again, the man signaled him to continue. Same thing happened after his third, fourth and fifth lines.

After the punch line, the man said "Zhei Meiguo jiaoshou shuo le yi ge xiaohua."
The audience burst into hysterical laughter.
Dr. Felson said "Wow! Your translation is phenomenal! You did my entire joke with just a few words. What did you say?"
The man replied "I said ‘The American professor just told a joke’."

A TRIBUTE:
Dr. Benjamin Felson MD (1913 – 1988), in the opinion of many (and mine), was the greatest radiologist ever lived. I was fortunate enough to have heard him speak several times. I meet him for the first time in the early 1970’s. He was lecturing in Canada at a conference hosted by a famous radiologist, Dr. Carl Zylak. It was customary practice to present rare exotic cases (with proven diagnoses) to quiz a visiting professor in front of a large audience. 10 very unusual cases were presented. He sailed through the first 9 cases as easily as diagnosing TB in which a cavity is present in the lung or a fracture where the bone is shattered into pieces.

After looking at the X- rays of the last case, Dr. Felson stated "I don’t know what the diagnosis is." Dr. Zylak said "This patient had a needle lung biopsy. That didn’t give us the diagnosis. We repeated the needle biopsy. Again, it failed to reveal what it was. Then, we did an open lung biopsy and electron microscopy. We still didn’t make a diagnosis. We repeated the open lung biopsy and sent specimens to various major centers in the states and Canada for more electron microscopy. Still, nobody could come up with a diagnosis." I was totally blown away. Should Dr. Felson mentioned anything (such as a virus or some kind of cancer) – any diagnosis at all – his answer for the last case would have been wrong!