Although Alfonso Wong’s (王家禧) comic series Old Master Q (老夫子), a Chinese-language comic strip well-known in Chinese-speaking communities around the world, has since been passed to Wong’s son, Joseph Wong (王澤), the latter is confident that the comic strip will withstand the test of time.
First published as a four-panel series in 1960, the comic strip, known in Chinese as Lao Fu Zi, was very well-received in papers and magazines up until the 1990s, when Alfonso Wong began suffering from health problems.
It was at that time that Joseph Wong stepped up and gradually took over the publication of the comic strip and the management of its spinoffs.
Photo: Chien Jung-Fong, Taipei Times
Joseph Wong said that readers of the comic strip span multiple generations and do not seem to be confined to national boundaries, and he has seen second-generation or third-generation children of Chinese descent in the UK and the US who, despite being barely able to speak Chinese, are still drawn to the comic strip.
Children in Mexico and other South American nations also visit their local Chinese bookshops specifically to pick up the comic strip, Joseph Wong said, adding that he believes the comic strip has a sort of allure that inspires a child’s innate yearning to doodle.
“It’s a state of mind that is most natural and it seems to be preserved in people,” Joseph Wong said, adding that he believes that was the reason for the comic strip’s resounding success.
Like brands such as Louis Vuitton, or the indispensable spices in Indian cuisine, Old Master Q has become a classic over the years, Joseph Wong said.
Following auctions of Old Master Q items at Sotheby’s in both 2008 and last year, the production of toy figurines is planned later this year by Old Master Q ZMedia in conjunction with Japanese company Be@rbrick, as well as plans to make life-size models of Old Master Q and other characters.
Joseph Wong said he has wondered whether the comic strip would still be remembered if it had ceased when his father had become ill and he had not stepped up to succeed him, but it has has always been there and it is continuing to adapt to modern times.
Originally reflecting the culture of Hong Kong, the comic strip has moved on to incorporate Joseph Wong’s own experiences of Hong Kong and Taiwan over the past 20 years.
However, Joseph Wong said that he is not the deciding factor on the value that society places on the comic strip; that is up to the public.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching