By Ann Y. Y. Leung The world-renowned style of Chinese ink-painting animation emerged in 1960 with the release of Little Tadpoles Look for Mama, produced by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. In terms of art style, this animation studio released a similar animated short film, The Herd Boy’s Flute in 1963, and then Deer Bell … Continue reading A Brief History of Ink-painting Animation in Hong Kong
By Sean Macdonald “Humanity is far from understanding itself. The turning point of civilization’s recklessly unrestrained exploration of the abyss of consciousness has been slow to arrive. Actually, we already know that Hell is our ideal way home (31).”[i] Hu Xiaojiang, The Father on the Moon Before I read this book, I was … Continue reading The Father on the Moon (Yueqiu shang de fuqin), by Hu Xiaojiang. Guangzhou: Huacheng, 2021.
By Daniel Dooghan Gejun Huang’s dissertation seeks to understand how gaming entrepreneurship works in China. Rather than adopting a top-down approach through the analysis of government policy, Huang goes to the entrepreneurs themselves to learn how—and if—government and industry supports function as intended. The dissertation employs a dataset of 33 interviews with gaming entrepreneurs in … Continue reading New Frontier of Digital Media and Entertainment: Exploring Entrepreneurship in the Chinese Digital Game Industry, Ph.D. Dissertation, by Gejun Huang, University of Texas at Austin, 2020. 179 pp.
By Jason Cody Douglass Armed with a Type-38 rifle to protect herself from bandits, 16-year-old camerawoman Duan Xiaoxuan ventured into the countryside outside of Changchun with half a dozen fellow animators to complete research and preproduction for Thank You, Kitty (1950). Duan had already worked at the Northeast Film Studio for two years at that … Continue reading Chinese Animation and Socialism: From Animators’ Perspectives, edited by Daisy Yan Du. Brill, 2022. 287 pp.
By Muyang Zhuang In December 2020, an exhibition was held by the Guardian Art Center in Beijing to celebrate the 120th birthday of Zhang Guangyu (1900–1965), one of the most important Chinese cartoonists. According to the curator, Zhang Guangyu was the pioneer of not only Chinese cartoons, but also graphic design and animation.[1]The curator divided … Continue reading Bell Boy: Cartoonists and Animated Filmmaking in Southern China, 1940–1949
By Christopher Rea Animation appears throughout Chinese cinema of the Republican era (1912-1949). Historians have paid close attention to the handful of available fully-animated Republican films. Yet dozens of live-action films also include animated segments, and examining where, when, and why such short animations appear might open up new possible approaches both to animation studies … Continue reading Animation and the Republican Chinese Film Industry
By Adela Hurtado It was Fall 2016, and I was studying law for a semester in Shanghai at the East China University of Political Science and Law (“ECUPL”) when I first became interested in Chinese animation. I had loved China itself since I was a child after reading “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” in the … Continue reading Journey to the Best: A Journey through Law and Policy for a Flourishing Chinese Animation Industry
By John A. Crespi What exactly are manhua, otherwise known as Chinese “cartoons”? The word manhua is easy to trace. It is a cognate of the Japanese word manga, though the two-character compound was used on occasion in China from the Song dynasty, in reference to a bird rather than pictures. The art of manhua, … Continue reading Manhua as Magazine: The Case of Shanghai Sketch no. 10
By Chuanhui Meng Rebecca Scott’s PhD dissertation, “The Production and Distribution of Lianhuanhua 1949-1966″ (University of Nottingham, 2016), looks at an intriguing and understudied medium lianhuanhua (linked pictures) during the first 17 years of socialist China. Through comprehensive and in-depth survey of both the production and distribution of lianhuanhua, Scott sheds exclusive light on political … Continue reading The Production and Distribution of Lianhuanhua 1949-1966, Ph.D. Dissertation, by Rebecca Scott, University of Nottingham, 2016. 322 pp.
By Jeremy E. Taylor John A. Crespi’s Manhua Modernity: Chinese Culture and the Pictorial Turn represents an important contribution to the study of print and visual cultures in mid-twentieth-century China. Given the prominence of Republican Shanghai in Crespi’s narrative, this book might also be seen as part of a broader attempt to re-assess the place … Continue reading Manhua Modernity: Chinese Culture and the Pictorial Turn, by John A. Crespi. University of California Press, 2020. 198 pp.