[Transcribed from a talk between Mo Yan and Chen-ning Yang, moderated by Fan Zeng, that took place Wednesday May 15th at Peking University.] 范曾：杨振宁先生曾经说过，科学家从来都不能发明，他只是在不断发现。我想问莫言兄，您是在发明创造，还是有另一种途径？ Fan Zeng: Chen-Ning Yang once said, “Scientists have never been able invent anything, all they are doing is discovering [that which already exists].” I want to ask Mo Yan, is your […]
Earlier this week, I received some comments from a reader regarding my research focus to “understand Chinese comics from the perspective of the present,” included in a previous post on this blog. The reader warned that this position could be interpreted as an expression of “presentism.” In light of this, I thought I might share […]
Ah, Mid-Autumn Festival. A time of coming together, a time of thanks, but most of all, a time of…mooncakes. What are mooncakes you ask? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Often compared (in both shape and density) to a hockey puck, the mooncake is one of China’s most iconic pastries. Traditionally filled with lotus […]
The following is based on a presentation I gave for the 2017 Association of Asian Studies annual conference in Toronto as part of the panel Materia Manhuanica: Reading Chinese Cartoons on March 16, 2017. Funding for this panel was generously provided by the Huang Yao Foundation, with Eileen Chow serving as discussant. Additional revisions were […]
This list will be updated as new works are found or published. For Chinese language works, title translations are my own, unless otherwise marked. Suggest a comic here! Boxer Legends 《义和团传说故事》 series from Tianjin Fine Arts Press 天津美术出版社 1. Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King Li 《托塔李天王》 Han Zuo 翰左, illustrated by Feng Zhichao 冯志超. May, 1959, F60, […]
The Japanese occupation of China, beginning with the annexation of Manchuria in 1932, and culminating in full-scale invasion via Shanghai in 1937, forms a key turning point in the history of modern China. If this seems like an odd (or inauspicious, or even politically incorrect) jumping off point for a review of Zhang Yimou’s latest […]
The following is based on a lecture on Chinese comics which I had the pleasure of presenting to the Asian Art and Visual Culture working group at the Townsend Center for Humanities at UC Berkeley on February 3, 2017, at the invitation of Hannibal Taubes and Weihong Bao. I’ve edited the original text slightly to […]
The Vancouver International Film Festival is town again and all I can say is, man, time flies. While much of my work to date has focused on Chinese comics, I’ve been trying to find a natural way to transition to a broader focus that encompasses my interests in Chinese literature and film. Page from an […]
Table A.1 Major manhua artists and publishers by decade, 1884-1917 Members of the 1926 Manhua Society are marked in bold. Pre-1900 Zhang Meisun 張眉孫 (1884-1975) Sun Xueni孫雪泥 (1888-1965) Shen Bochen沈泊塵 (1889-1920) Ding Song丁松 (1891-1972) Zhou Shoujuan周瘦鵑 (1895-1968) Feng Zikai 豐子愷 (1898-1975) Wang Dunqing王敦慶 (1899-1990) 1900-1910 Zhang Guangyu 張光宇 […]
This is the conclusion of my MA thesis, The Shanghai Manhua Society: A History of Early Chinese Cartoonists, 1918-1938, completed in December 2015 at the Department of Asian Studies at UBC. Since passing my defense, I’ve decided to put the whole thing up online so that my research will be available to the rest of […]