The Coming of Age of Chinese Comics
63
“avant-garde” in modern Chinese comics and filled up the space of comic
publication in the 1920s, which foresaw the coming of Chinese comics’
golden age in the 1930s and 1940s.
University of Nevada Las Vegas
Ying Bao
Notes:
*See Shen 2001, 110; Bi and Huang 1986, 72. According to Feng Zikai, the
definition of manhua is very vague: “actually, it is still questionable if my
drawings are manhua or not, because there was no such term in China
before...There is neither a clear definition of the so-called manga in Japan.
But as far as I know, Japanese manga covers Chinese jijiu hua (hasty
painting), jixing hua (improvising painting), and Western cartoon and
caricature.” See Feng Zikai, “Manhua chuangzuo ershi nian,” cited in Bi and
Huang, 1986: 72.
2 The term, “petty urbanites” is a common translation o f the Chinese “xiao
shimin,” a term that has been in use since the early twentieth Century,
referring to a broadly and vaguely defined urban d a ss who were non-elite,
non-traditional, nonagrarian, modestly educated and marginally w ell-o ff—
such as small merchants, clerks, students, housew ives, and middle-lowerclass men and wom en in general.
3 Bi Keguan and Huang Yuanlin’s Zhongguo manhua shi (History of
Chinese Comics) (1986: 83) dates that the Cartoon Society was established
in the autumn of 1927 and had eleven members. However, Huang Ke’s
Shanghai meishushi zhaji (Reading notes of the history of art in Shanghai)
(2000: 54-55) suggests that the eleven-member Organization was established
in December 1926. Huang Ke’s article also notes that it was in July 1926
that the Cartoon Society published the first book of the “Manhuahui
congshu” (the Cartoon Society Series)—Huang Wennong’s Wennong
fengcihua ji (Collection of Wennong’s satirical pictures). One of the initial
members of the society—Ye Qianyu—touches slightly upon the event in his
memoir. He vaguely recalled that it was shortly after the publication of
Shanghai Sketch and there were only seven persons. This could be one of the
many inaccurate records in his memoir. See Ye, 1992, p. 82.
4 Ibid, p. 84-85.
5 The joumal claimed that they were the only weekly of photograph and
comics in modern China {Zhongguo jindai weiyi zhi sheying manhua
zhoubao) in their advertisement for the publication of their ten-issue
collections. See Shanghai Sketch, 71: 6.
6 Here I borrow Michel Hockx’s explanation of “tongren.” See Michel
Hockx, “Creation by Association and by Dissociation,” available at
http://mclc.osu.edu/rc/pubs/institutions/hockx.htm.