Which part are you struggling with?

If it’s the panel itself, it seems to be a Chinese person with a queue braid operating a telephone switchboard. It seems to be connected to the line below where they provide some fortune-cookie wisdom in broken english about pessimism. I could be wrong, but I think the only funny there is racism.

If it’s the story below about the couple in the park, I think where it reads “- punch” might be to indicate that was the punchline, the joke is rather dry so it’s telling the reader that “yes, this was a joke.” The joke there is that the man is on a date with a woman, but is more preoccupied with looking like a good citizen to a veteran / recruiter