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comic Strip in the context of Shanghai modern (to borrow Leo Ou-fan Lee’s
term), I will elaborate on how the Westem-influenced visual forms were
localized in manhua, which was shaped and, at the same time, was shaping
the modern sensibility of urbanites in metropolitan Shanghai. Together with
a wide variety of cultural manifestations of mass-produced, mass-mediated,
and mass-consumed modemity, such as motion pictures, photography,
fashion, modern architecture, interior decoration, advertising, etc., manhua
played a significant role in constructing a modern urban identity through
comic narrative. The appearance of “Mr. Wang” marked the point at which
manhua had fully grown into an effective graphic narrative tool of social
humor and matured as an independent genre of Chinese art.
The C artoon Society and Shanghai Sketch
The institutionalized position of manhua was signified by the
establishment of China’s first cartoonist society, Manhua hui (the Cartoon
Society), in Shanghai about 1926 or 1927.3 The Cartoon Society, as John
Lent (1994, p. 286) puts it, was “an important rallying force for the
profession, providing an esprit de corps and establishing a Standard name
(imanhua) for their craft, even though other names (especially katun [sic])
were used well into the late 1930s.” Most of the members in the society were
commercial artists who had no academic training in art but shared a common
interest in integrating art into Contemporary social life. They were less
confined to Chinese art conventions but open to new expressions of urban
life in Shanghai. By organizing the Cartoon Society, they tried to promote
the neologism and new form of manhua as a resistance to the orthodox art
forms in China (Bi and Huang, 1986, p. 85). The society organized Seminars
to discuss the social functions and techniques of manhua, introduce foreign
comic works, and to exchange artistic ideas between members. At least three
collections of works of members— Huang Wennong’s (7-1934) Wennong
fengci huaji and Chu yi zhi huaji, and Lu Shaofei’s (1903-) Beiyou
manhua—were published by the society in 1927 and 1928.4 But their most
influential effort of cultivating the field was the publication of Shanghai
Sketch, a weekly pictorial o f “photography and comics” (sheying manhua
zhoubao),5 under the name Zhongguo meishu kanxing she (The Publishing
House o f Chinese Fine Arts).
As Bi and Huang label it, Shanghai Sketch started out as a veritable
“tongren kanwu” (1986, p. 88), which we may define as a joumal published
by “a group o f friends, associates or otherwise kindred spirits.”6 According
to Ye Qianyu’s (1907-1995) memoir, the manager and editor-in-chief of the
joumal was Zhang Guangyu (1900-1964). The vice manager and business
director was Zhang’s brother Zhang Zhengyu (1904-1976). And the editor of
the comic page was Ye Qianyu (see Ye, 1992, p. 26). Because photography