| As far as humor is concerned, Lin Yutang's statement is of great signifigance: humor is a state of mind, a point of view and a way of looking at life. Humor is also a universal form of art and a tool of communication. Besides, humor is a special carrier of culture due to inextricable link between language and culture. Actually,"humor takes us into the heart of cultural understanding"(cited in Lee, 1994:373). What stands behind Chinese humor is the Chinese culture, while what go beyond English humor are Western cultures. However, studies on the close relationship between humor and culture in cross-cultural communication are comparatively few in number, not to mention comparative studies on Chinese humor, English humor and their respective cultures.Whoever wants to be a successful cross-cultural communicator should learn to appreciate cultural similarities and accept differences. Therefore, based on the theory of"diversity of cultures"and"Maslow's theory of five basic needs", from a cross-cultural communication perspective, the current study endeavors to compare similarities (functions of humor and techniques applied in humor) and differences (topics, joking objects and expressing forms) between Chinese and English humor and to explore the causes rooted in Chinese and Western cultures, aiming at lending support for a native speaker (Chinese or Western) to the appreciation of humor in another culture and promoting mutual understanding in the global village.Teaching and learning culture of target language in the foreign language classroom appears to be a matter of great importance. As the implication of this comparative study, humor, in the sense of appreciation, can be one possible strategy to the realization of cultural training in all-round way. With understanding laughter, deep appreciation of English humor with a teacher's help in the foreign language classroom necessarily means learners'improvement of cross-cultural awareness.
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