Zhang Sanlu

Zhang Sanlu was a Beijing performer of the Qing whose dates are unknown; his career seems to have begun in the Daoguang or Xianfeng reign and ended around the Tongzhi reign. He started as a clown in bajiaogu, the eight-sided-drum ballads, known for ad-libbed gags, and was also skilled at vocal mimicry and conjuring. Lian Kuoru's Jianghu Congtan (1936) says that Zhang, unwilling to go on singing bajiaogu, called his own art xiangsheng, and the Qing zidishu ballad Suiyuan Le, preserved in a Baibenzhang manuscript, mentions him by name. The Manchu performer Yu Xiaosan remembered him as most famous for solo comic monologues. He is the earliest crosstalk performer found in written sources.