Chinese Humor with Beijing Characteristics

At the recommendation of a friend, I watched a Chinese TV series "The Spring of Li Chuntian". The title character is a 38-year old single woman who's a newspaper editor. All the stories are around relationships, be it hers, or people around her. It is set in Beijing.

What I have found most striking is the way people talk in the series. No dialogue is ever a direct or simple dialogue, as everyone tries to add twists and rhetoric to their verbal exchanges, in a way that makes them seem like that they are always trying to prolong the conversation or have an argument. In a way they are almost a bit rude! I am from Beijing originally, and I have to say that I am not even used to it. Then it occurred to me that I heard my mom and my sister occasionally talk like that, and I erroneously thought that they were argumentative. It turned out that people in Beijing now talk like that!

I asked a friend about this observation. While she's from the south, she likes the colorful language of Beijing and the bantering effect. It is totally different from the humor we see in American show business. It is edgy like Conan O'Brien but less funky. It is self-deprecating like Edward Burns, but more rude and crude. It is sarcastic like Woody allen but less intellectual. So perhaps I can only call it "Chinese humor with Beijing Characteristics".