Ah. Yes this is indeed a interesting topic.
Humor with a language barrier can be very interesting thing.
Usually after some explaining I get my self understood haha. And then we laugh. But this is quite difficult thing to work out. Even if we can communicate every day things rather good, by using three different languages haha... The humor often gets lost because mandarin is not my native language or Finnish/English is not hers.
But she says that she likes my humor, and loves to know that I have a good sense of humor. Usually the jokes are somehow related to embarassing things.
Often when I learn a new word, and it has the same alphabets as a word I already know from before... I will mix them and she often has to think about my toneless sentences for some time before understanding haha. But when she does notice/understand my true meaning she always laughs.
Just as an example "bao bao bao bei er" haha... "cuddling my baby child" 抱抱宝贝儿. I am not sure if its 100% correct. But she knows the words and sentences that I know/have studied before. So she can usually guess rather easily what I'm trying to say.
Also she does not always remember the right words in Finnish/English, but gets the words close enough, so I understand her. But she makes some simple mistake with a letter or a few. So the word and sentence meaning changes totally. And sometimes the sentences become really funny. And after I explain why did I start to laugh so much, she is embarassed but also laughs. And says she will try to remember next time.
Hehe many things.