Reminiscences
John A. Lent
Fang Cheng (1918-2018).
The doyen of Chinese cartooning, Fang Cheng, died the morning of Aug. 22, 2018.
He was 100 years and two months old, an achievement that pleased him immensely,
and one that he predicted in one of the dozens of interviews/chats Xu Ying and
I had with him. In our initial visit with Fang Cheng, he told us he was going
to live to 100, and each year, publish two books, continue to write newspaper
columns daily, paint many humorous drawings and calligraphies. On a visit, Aug.
2, 2010, I reminded him of that prediction: he said he was down to compiling
one book yearly. Up until a few days before his death, even while hospitalized,
he continued to draw self-caricatures and, a bit earlier, calligraphy; with the
help of his son, Sun Jihong, he gave the works to the Red Cross to be auctioned
off, the proceeds used to educate less-fortunate children.
After our first interview with Fang
Cheng (June 10, 2001), which lasted from 9:10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (71/2 hours),
Ying and I always looked forward to visiting him, mesmerized by retellings of
his life and career, his theories on humor (see, IJOCA, 8:2 [2006]; 9:2 [2007]), his philosophies on life, his hopes
and dreams, and his singing of songs in English, Russian, and Chinese that he
remembered from his childhood. He still sang upon request the last time I
visited him in March 2018. More often than not, Fang Cheng, from our first
meeting until he was 99, challenged me to arm wrestle; usually the “match”
ended in a draw, me holding on for dear life to prevent the embarrassment of
this older man with a vise-like grip whipping me.
Knowing of Fang Cheng’s desire to
share his knowledge about humor and cartooning to a wider audience inside and
outside China, I invited him to speak at conferences and symposia that I was
active in at University of Western Ontario in 2000 (invitation cancelled for
lack of funding); Singapore and Malaysia, 2004; Communication University of
China in Beijing and U.S. in 2005; Guiyang, China, 2007, and Spain, 2009 (which
he was advised by family not to attend because of his age). In the U.S., he
stayed for a week at my house, during which he spoke at two
universities/colleges, practiced his English reading David Copperfield in his room at night, drew a Zhong Kui painting
for my house, and told (even retold) his life story in installments at the
dinner table for a few days. Asked if he had dietary restrictions, he replied
he ate everything except people, anything with legs except tables and chairs.
Has he eaten mice? “Yes, three kinds; tastes delicious, like frog.”
During his stay, he requested visits
to a comics shop where he was disappointed (“these are not comics, just manga.
No humor”), and a toy or novelty store where he wanted to buy something to
“make me laugh.”
Fang Cheng said in our 2001 meeting
that he stayed healthy through love, humor, and openness and by riding his bicycle
and swimming. The secret of a long life (he was 83 then)? “In one word, busy,”
he replied, but then added, “not worry.” And busy he was those last 17 years of
life -- doing calligraphy, writing his many books and daily newspaper columns,
illustrating others’ books, drawing humorous paintings that included his own
poetry, arranging the donation of his works to museums in Zhongshan and
Shanghai, refining what he considered his unique theories of humor, lecturing
in China and abroad, and helping less-privileged people. He even managed to run
one leg of the torch carry to the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing before the
2008 Olympics; he was 90 at the time.
On more than one occasion, beginning
in 2001, Fang Cheng described how the route of his life was guided by fate. In
the Winter 2003 issue of Persimmon,
Xu Ying and I wrote about friends Liao Bingxiong and Fang Cheng and their
careers and views on cartooning. In that article, Fang Cheng credits fate and
heaven and the gods with determining his destiny. I end this remembrance with a
section from that article that gives an overview of his career, and fate’s role
in it.
Fang’s
own cartooning career stretches to the 1930s and was determined, as he says,
“by heaven, by the gods.” Fang was born in Beijing, but at the age of four
moved to his family’s ancestral home in Zhongshan County, near Macao, in
Guangdong Province. When he was nine, his family returned to Beijing, and he
attended middle school there. Originally his goal was to become a doctor, but
he did not pass entrance exams for Yanching University (on the campus of what
is now Beijing University). Instead, he enrolled in the chemistry department at
Wuhan University in 1936, but returned home the following year, when the
Japanese invasion occurred. In 1939, he resumed his studies at Wuhan, where he
also got involved in acting, at the same time learning on his own to draw
cartoons. “I was one of the activists there; six of us who were involved in
drama started a weekly wall newspaper. I drew cartoons on the wall each week
for the two years the newspaper lasted,” Fang said.
After
graduation, Fang went to work as a chemist in a laboratory in Sichuan Province
when “the gods” intervened again: “I was in love with a girl and wanted to
marry her, but she said no. I could not sleep or do anything else, so I left
and went to Shanghai.” Fang said he had seen Shanghai periodicals with their
many cartoons and decided he wanted to draw professionally. In Shanghai, he had
no job and no place to stay, but the American director of an advertising
company that represented cosmetics clients employed him as an artist. Not long
after that, the chief editor of the Chinese newspaper Observer asked him to draw several cartoons weekly, and he began
contributing to other newspapers as well.
In
1948, as the Guomindang realized their days were numbered, they made plans to
flee to Taiwan -- hoping to take the most famous artists with them, Fang said.
Not wanting to follow Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan, most artists escaped to Hong
Kong, which is where Fang went in 1948. Although he wanted to return to
Shanghai after Liberation in 1949, fate changed his course. “There was a sunken
ship in Shanghai harbor, so [the ship we were on] went farther north and I
ended up in Beijing,” Fang said. There, he worked for the Xinman Daily, but recognizing that the People’s Daily had the best opportunities for cartoonists, he
joined that newspaper and not only drew cartoons but also wrote humor essays.