MODERN cartoons are an exotic cultural form in China, where they are gaining increasing popularity throughout the broad and heated world of youth culture and entertainment. However, traditional Chinese cartoons seem to have been lost in the worldwide cartoon wave that swept into homes in the 1990s.

Traditional cartoons

Cartoons - pictures with a narrative function - actually have deep roots within the long history of Chinese traditional culture. A famous Chinese painting named "Han Xizai Ye Yan Tu" (Han Xizai's Night Banquet) dating back to the 10th century is composed of five consecutive pictures vividly reflecting the luxurious night life of ancient Chinese Government officials. Thus it can be seen to comply with the basic definition of a cartoon.

Since a comic strips series was published in 1884, describing a political event in neighbouring Korea, a new kind of folk cartoon has come into being. These more familiar types of Chinese cartoons emerged at the beginning of the 20th century, mainly in the form of comic strips in magazines and newspapers. The form underwent a succession of ups and downs, but fell into decline in the 1980s.

As a form of folk art, the early popularity of traditional Chinese cartoons was based upon the development of the folk culture. This kind of folk interest was quickly distracted by the rise of mass culture, especially the popularity of television, in the China of the 1980s.

New cartoons

Modern cartooning should be defined as a category of integrated art combining drawings, literature, technology and film images, which can depict an intact story by way of a string of immobile pictures, evoking a kind of flowing reading enjoyment for their "readers". Understood in this way, Chinese cartoons are latecomers on the worldwide stage.

In the 1990s, Japanese cartoons were introduced into China and soon became quite popular, adored by domestic cartoon fans, especially juveniles, as they refreshed the traditional image of cartoons and created a new recreational cartoon world. Some fixed characters populate the Japanese-style cartoons: the hero and heroine are always depicted as especially handsome and gorgeous with big eyes and slim bodies. The subjects of stories are entertaining and sensational, including young love, scientific or magical fictions and some violent fights or contests.

Compared with their Japanese counterparts, US cartoons tend to concentrate on heroic themes. The heroes are often endowed with supernatural abilities in these cartoon works, such as "Spider-man" and "Batman". Many of these US cartoons have already been adapted into movies after obtaining great success as "comic books".

In fact, these modern cartoons have become icons of popular culture and have successfully found a place within industrial mass production and mass markets. Faced with competition by such fantastic pictures with their innovative visual impact, telling simple but attractive stories, Chinese cartoons are being forced to innovate in turn in order to bring domestic cartoons into the industrial age.

Lost and embarrassed

However, the current state of Chinese cartoon development can only be called superficial and puzzling. A survey conducted by a well-known domestic cartoon magazine shows that about 95 per cent of the Chinese cartoon market remains dominated by Japanese and US products.

Even the original Chinese cartoon works featuring similar images, dialogues, pictures and stories to the foreign cartoons often involve what critics have called "a kind of mendacity and affectation".

The reasons for such imitation are complicated: commercial writers and publishers pursuing immediate profit will imitate any new cartoon to hit the market and gains popularity. Another draw-back for Chinese original cartoons lies in the local "production model", that is, creation by individual artists without systematic co-operation, lacking mature business operations and division of labour, including market research, publication plans and collection of subject-matter, as have long been established in Japan and the US.

The Chinese cartoon market is already voracious but the domestic industry cannot yet meet it. As a result, original cartoon creation lags far behind the global level and suffers from a reputation for notorious imitation of foreign styles.

Chinese styles

It is widely acknowledged that China's own cartoons should promote themselves on the world stage and in the local market as well, which means the special characteristics of Chinese cartoons need to be drawn upon for their survival and future development.

Some people have proposed that Chinese cartoonists should return to their traditional roots in search of inspiration.

Since in China cartoons are conceived as individual creations, the characteristics of Chinese cartoons should first be traced to the specific personalities of Chinese cartoonists.

The domestic stable of cartoonists is mostly in the age range of 20-25 years. These cartoonists love art and witnessed its fast development throughout the 1990s and into the new century. However, they lack sophisticated powers of observation and description and also - most importantly - the mature personalities, which inhibits the freedom of imagination as well as the character formation of Chinese cartoons.

Actually, a true cartoonist should not only possess solid drawing skills but also be a qualified playwright and film director. In addition, knowledge of many other fields is of great significance for the ideas underlying successful cartoon stories.

In this respect, the cartoonists of Taiwan and Hong Kong have shown special talents and become popular nationwide, with their creative perspectives, distinctive styles and sensitive emotions. Cai Zhizhong, a cartoonist from Taiwan, is well-known for his cartoons explaining traditional ideas from ancient books from a modern perspective. Zhu Deyong has invented a classical form of cartoon, consisting of four serial pictures, expressing humorous ideas about love affairs and marriages in modern cities. Jimmy Liao, another brilliant cartoonist from Taiwan has created a new style in the hope of transforming his pictures into a refreshing and comfortable language. Besides individual style, professional packaging, publication and planning also adds to their success.

As cartoons are moving forward to being a mature industry in China, many cartoon products, ironically, are not allowed in schools and are often regarded as an obstacle to children's studies by their teachers and parents. No matter how modern cartoons are conceived: as a kind of culture or entertainment, fashion or custom, Chinese youths and children are in urgent need of their own original cartoons, with an independent cultural identity.