Cartoonists have had a hard time in Taiwan, if we are to believe Hong Te-ling (洪德麟) a historian of the art. Since its earliest days, the profession has had to battle the oppressive publishing policies of colonial regimes, not least the KMT. Censorship during the 1950s and 1960s stifled creative artists and gave Japanese imports a foothold that they have yet to lose. For all that, a few talented artists have fought to establish a local cartoon art, and their success has seen people like Chai Chi-chung, Ronald Chu and Lao Chiung taking the first steps toward establishing themselves in the international arena. Following are three profiles.
Chai Chi-chung (蔡志忠)
Making it all simple
Illustration: Courtesy of Ronald Chu
He started out copying any kind of comic that came his way, but developed a style that is unique to himself. His journey from the son of a down-at-heel village scholar to comic book super-stardom has also shaped a personality of amiable self-assurance that knows no bounds to his creative abilities. His comics are available in 16 languages and by his own estimate, he has sold over 30 million books.
Chai Chi-chung shot to stardom in 1986 with his groundbreaking comic "Sayings of Zhuang Zi" (
In typical Chai Chi-chung fashion, having done one Chinese philosopher, he set out to do them all. There followed in quick succession comics on The Sayings of Lao Zi, The Sayings of Confucius, The Book of Zen covering these difficult topics with great speed -- but also with a great eye for presenting complex ideas in simple terms.
Illustration: Courtesy of Chai Chi-chung
One student of Chinese likened them to Cliff Notes, a quick easy way of getting past the verbiage and difficult language of the original text to the main point. And in a sense that is what Chai is all about, especially in the way he draws. While Chai happily claims to have an "inimitable" style, he makes no secret of the fact that he makes maximum use of technology to maximize his output.
Everything he draws he describes as a "chip," a module that can be put to multiple uses. Images are copied and mixed together in different combinations. In this way, he spares himself a lot of drawing -- so he can focus on more creative things. He now has volumes of such "chips," and says that there will come a time when he no longer has to draw at all -- everything will be there at his fingertips.
Chai created a series of popular characters, such as the Drunken Swordsman, Fat Dragon and One-eyed Marshall, which were serialized in newspapers around the world. His early historical cartoons drew on the conventions of Chinese story telling and stereotypes, into which he injected a large dose of contemporary humor.
Illustration: Courtesy of Lao Chiung
The leap from the Drunken Swordsman to Zhuang Zi was a quantum jump as far as cartoon content was concerned, giving the medium seriousness it never before possessed in Chinese culture. And how did he come to make this jump? "I discovered that Zhuang Zi was so much like me," he says, with his trademark self-assurance. "Nothing could have been more natural."
With most of the Chinese classics covered, Chai, like many philosophers before him, has turned to the study of physics. For someone who has always seen his work as a "striving for fundaments" -- reducing complex philosophical ideas and cartoon images to the simplest components -- this seems like another perfectly natural move. It was always the thinking of the philosophers that interested him, not their antiquity. "You can't learn lessons from history," he says, self-assured, once again.
Ronald Chu (朱德庸)
The absurdity of life
As a student at Shih Hsin University, Ronald Chu had a love of drawing, but it was not till many years of drawing cartoons, that he eventually decided it was to be his profession. "The future is hard to predict," he says, seeming, even now, as one of Taiwan's most commercially successful cartoonists, rather bewildered at just how he achieved his success.
His career was jump started with the publication of Battle Domestica (雙響炮) in the China Times while he was still in the army, serving on the offshore island of Matsu. The success of the series earned him many new commissions, and it was not long before he found himself working as a professional cartoonist. But despite earning his living from the syndication of Battle Domestica and the subsequently enormously successful The Sour Pack (醋溜族) and Uptown Singles (澀女郎), Chu continued to doubt if this was truly his profession, at one stage even toying with the idea of training as a pilot.
"I suppose it is because I had always seen drawing as a hobby," he says. "I suppose it is because for many Chinese, especially in the past, drawing was useless, it wasn't a `proper' job."
These days, however, commercial recognition of cartoon art is important to Chu. And though he hasn't gone out of his way to promote his material through product tie-ins, "I am willing to consider anything that can be tied in with cartoon art," he says. This spurred Chu to give the humble four-box cartoon greater status in Chinese society and use it to benefit society. It was this kind of community spirit that prompted him to create the enormously successful cartoon character Hsu Tze-lin (
Chu's cartoons focus on the lives of urban men and women, for, he says, "the city is the gathering place of people, and when people come together, they do many absurd things."
But it is as an observer rather than a participant that he sees himself. "Strictly speaking, I am not particularly fond of people," Chu says. "But I am very interested in people."
Last year, Chu negotiated the rights for a simplified character edition of his work for distribution in China. The English edition, published in Singapore has long been popular, and according to Chu, his work has been pirated in Malaysia for almost a decade. He is also negotiating Japanese rights.
All this seems a long way from the college student who liked to draw pictures but wasn't sure if it could be a career. "It all happened simply because I liked drawing, so you see, fate is really rather funny."
Lao Chiung (
A child's-eye view
In her most recent collection published last December, the title might be thought either misleading or possibly ironic. Be happy! is far from sugar-coated allegories and motivational one liners. "I like `cold' humor, rather than `hot' humor, basically humor that is understated. It is my basic style," the cartoonist says.
As a child Lao Chiung enjoyed watching films, and from these she learned about how an artist could question assumptions, could reveal her difficulties, her observations and her feelings.
"I did not grow up reading comics or anything like that," she says. "I had perfectly conventional expectations. It was not until I started working in an advertising company that I realized that people could create things for themselves. That's what I wanted to do -- create."
Lao Chiung derived some of her inspiration from Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, who she refers to with admiration. Her own work sometimes reflects the same qualities -- the confusion, occasional obstinacy and seemingly accidental insights that children have into the events of the world.
"I have always seen comics about children as very important as a creative artist has a child's heart -- it is what allows them to continue their work. This is something we have lost."
A child's sensitivity is perhaps what gives Lao Chiung's comics their freshness, but behind this first impression lies the many years of experience exposing herself to the world of events, taking part in them, organizing her feelings about them, and conveying her responses to readers.
This constant organization of her thoughts on society through her work, she says, makes her more sensitive to her environment and more concerned about what is going on. Although she did not say so directly, Lao Chiung seems to regard her work as a kind of social record of changing times and perceptions. For this reason, she does not steer away from the darker side of life in her comic strips -- such as the 921 earthquake.
In contrast to Ronald Chu, who also has a domestic and urban focus, Lao Chiung says that she is seeking to portray "something more ordinary, less dramatic." It all comes back to "cold" humor, not the belly laugh but rather the quiet realization of life's fundamental absurdities.
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