Ding Cong's Old Comics

Author: Ding Cong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-03-01
Features: Ding Cong, pen name "Xiao Ding," has continued to use "Xiao Ding" as his pen name since the mid-1930s. He describes himself as an eternal child who never quite grows up, often stumbling into mud pits yet remaining naive to the world. At nearly eighty, he is still "Xiao Ding." His current physical condition proves: vegetables, fruits, sunlight, morning exercises, disco, Tai Chi, ginseng, and Chinese softshell turtle essence are all unnecessary. What works for him: painting the art he loves, eating the meat he loves, having friends he loves, and being amusingly ruled by his beloved wife. This book mainly includes the author's works from before the liberation, with only a small portion being Ding Cong's cartoons from the 1960s and 1970s, such as "Needle Through the Eye," which leaves one speechless. He describes himself as an eternal child who never quite grows up, often stumbling into mud pits yet remaining naive to the world. At nearly eighty, he is still "Xiao Ding." His current physical condition proves: vegetables, fruits, sunlight, morning exercises, disco, Tai Chi, ginseng, and Chinese softshell turtle essence are all unnecessary. What works for him: painting the art he loves, eating the meat he loves, having friends he loves, and being amusingly ruled by his beloved wife.
Author Bio: Ding Cong was born in Shanghai in 1916. In the early 1930s, he began publishing cartoons, and he has been doing so for 67 years. During the War of Resistance Against Japan, he moved between Hong Kong and the Southwest rear areas, working as a poster editor, stage design artist, art teacher, and creating anti-war propaganda cartoons. He also participated in numerous art exhibitions. From 1945 to 1947, he published many influential satirical cartoons in Shanghai with the theme of "Striving for Democracy." After the liberation, he served as the deputy editor-in-chief of People's Art Magazine. For over two decades after 1957, he did not publish cartoons until after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, when he resumed creating satirical cartoons. Since 1980, he has worked with extraordinary energy, producing a large number of illustrations for literary works and satirical cartoons. His cartoon column has remained uninterrupted since the founding of Reading in 1979. Over the past two decades, he has published more than thirty collections, including Illustrations for Lu Xun's Novels; Illustrations by Ding Cong; illustrations for works by Lao She such as Four Generations Under One Roof and Rickshaw Boy; the Ding Cong Cartoon Series; The Chinese Cartoon Series—Ding Cong; Ding Cong's Album—Cartoons, Illustrations, Sketches, Speedwriting, Portraits, and Designs; Worrying Uselessly; A Hundred Pictures and A Hundred Parables (co-authored with Chen Siyi); and bilingual editions of Anecdotes of Antiquity and Anecdotes of the Present. He is currently the director of the Cartoon Art Committee of the Chinese Artists Association.