AMINE AND MANGA

Chinese animation have started in the 1920s before the emergence of Japanese animation in the '50s. Inspired by Disney and Hollywood films produced in America, WanSi Brothers(万氏兄弟) produced the first Chinese silent animation Choas in the Studio (大闹画室) in 1926. WanSi Brothers highly acclaimed the animation development in America, Russia, and Germany. He believed that Chinese animation should be instructive, logical and thought-provoking besides being entertaining to its audience. As a result, Chinese animation emerged as the only dominant animation style in the Far East throughout the 1930's and 1940's. At the same time, comic development also gained momentum. The most famous work of the period is Zhang Le Ping's (張樂平) San Mao's Travel Diary (三毛流浪記). The story depicted an orphan boy named San Mao who drifts from place to place and suffers various hardships. Being always optimistic in the face of hardships, he eventually got his fortunes and blessings. The main character had been compared frequently with AQ (阿Q), the fictional character from Lu Xun(魯 迅), one of the greatest literary figure in the 1930s. Eventually, San Mao have been put into animation at much later time. In Hong Kong, the story of Lao Fu Zi(老 夫子), a comical character bear some similarity with old Confucian scholar who could not fit the modern life, has become popular and has been animated in Hong Kong in the '80s.