Chinese Cartoons

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                  

                                     Introduction

 

    Presented below is a collection of cartoons that were published in major Chinese magazines between 1980 and 2002.  These are two decades in which China has gone through, and in fact is still going through, a profound transformation in almost every walk of life.  With the regression of the isolated Stalinist state that dominated the country through the 1970s, various social forces and intellectual trends sprang up to create a dynamic environment, which many scholars of China see as unprecedented.  The transformation, which features an assertive campaign for modernization, has had both positive and negative impacts on the Chinese traditional culture, and this fast-paced economic growth comes with a price to pay.  It  raises a question to us, therefore, regarding how we understand and assess the transformation of China in the immediate past.

    Scholars, critics, and students of China today attempt to approach the question from a variety of perspectives.  One of the ways to understand the change in that culture is to follow the lines of thought of the Chinese people.  The cartoon, for example, with its unique form of expression, is a mirror that reflects social diseases as well as the popular reaction to them; its conspicuous visual effect, combined with its richness of content, can be a very effective way for students to begin understanding China.  With cartoons that come directly from Chinese sources, students do not have to learn the Chinese language in order to utilize primary sources for their study and research. 

    In the summer of 2002, supported by a grant from  Tacoma Community College, I  traveled to China on a mission to collect cartoons.  My three-week sojourn there was very productive, and the total collection amounts to over 1,000 cartoons.  Because these cartoons were produced over the past few decades and address many different social and political topics, however, it makes it a much harder job to categorize and interpret them than simply to collect them.  I decided to organize the cartoon collection topically and present them with my interpretation. 

The subject I focused on here is the family, the core of the Chinese social fiber and, consequently, key to understanding China.  I further divided the subject of family into four smaller topics: love and marriage, changing family relations, the one-child policy, and child-rearing.  I hope this will provide students another venue by which they can be ushered into China studies, other than regular classroom teaching.  Meanwhile, I have turned over the originals of my entire cartoon collection to the TCC library, so that those who hope to pursue a deeper understanding will have access to this invaluable material. 

I want to take this opportunity to thank those who have helped make this online cartoon exhibition possible, including English Instructor Debbie Kinerk, International Studies Director Sandy Plann, and Computer Technology Consultant Mark Newey.   TCC student Shauna Clark and my Chinese assistant Amy Fan also contributed to the completion of this project.  All mistakes, if any, are mine. 

Yi Li, Ph.D. Department of History

May 28, 2003

 

                                Love and Marriage

 

    Prior to the re-opening of the country in the1980s, love and marriage in China featured some interesting characteristics.  First, there was tremendous social pressure if one remained single through his or her late 20s, and the pressure would increase as the single got older.  Second, problems between a couple might not be unusual, but divorce seemed unthinkable.  As a result, most marriages in China appeared stable, although the the role of affection might vary, because of the pressure, visible or invisible, that society had exerted over them to remain married.  In other words, whether or not one's love and marriage lasted and how successful they were depended not only on factors such as  the involved individuals' personalities and interests, but also on complex political and social elements that inevitably influenced the fate of the individual.  The ancient sage Mencius once said that the people were like grass and the rulers were like the wind; when the wind blows, the grass bends.

    The past two decades, however, witnessed fundamental changes in love and marriage in China.  In a sense these changes may be understood as a by-product of rapid economic transformation, but, more importantly, they were also a result of the diminishing control of the government over the individual's life, coupled by the inflow of Western thought, which the Chinese leaders once branded as "bourgeois liberalism."

 



This cartoon was published in the early 1980s, a time when China was just putting itself back together after the decade-long Cultural Revolution. Many young men and women, known as the Red Guards, were carried away by the turbulent movement, only to realize in the end that their youth had slipped away. After all the dust had settled, they began to address the then-most urgent issue in their life, the family; but their past kept haunting  them. Those who were in the "30ish" stage of their lives during the early 1980s belonged to that generation, and the cartoon reveals their mentality: both  the man and the woman on the date are suspicious of the other party, wondering, "Why is he (she) still not married this late in age?"



By the 1980s, the Cultural Revolution was over, but housing remained a major problem for most Chinese people in the metropolitan areas, and it was not uncommon for three generations to jam into one small room of less than ten square meters.  The shortage of housing was particularly a source of frustration for the younger members of society who were ready to have a family but far behind on the waiting list.  Interestingly, the problem coincided with China's initial campaign for "late-marriage" to slow down the population growth.  This cartoon places a spot light on the juxtaposition of the housing problem and government's "late-marriage" campaign.  The journalist, anxious to set up a role model for late marriage, asks the middle-age-looking bride and groom to tell the audience how they were able to postpone their wedding.  Their answer, however, defies his expectation: "We got  married as soon as we had housing, like everyone else."


The 1980s was a time of  rapid social transformation in almost every walk of life.  Prior to that, it was against the social norm for one to have sex before the wedding night, and those who did so often found themselves to be in the status of close to social outcast.  The loosening social control during the 80s, coupled with the influx of Western culture, lowered the bar.  In the cartoon, the teacher is coaching a group of young girls, giving them some tips about being women.  When she asks the students what to do next after getting pregnant, the students answer, "Get married right away!" (to cover up the pre-marital sex).

After all the turbulence of the 20th century, the traditional roles of men and women in Chinese society changed greatly.  The image of a Chinese woman who followed her man three steps behind on her bound feet, as stereotypically presented in Amy Tan's fiction, was nowhere to be found.  Instead, what you get more often is this picture: a man brags about being as strong as rock and uses his forehead to break a bar.  But when his wife comes to "discipline" him, poking him on his forehead with her tender finger leaves a lump.

This cartoon shows how the husband and wife switch their roles in the workplace and at home.  In the workplace, the man is superior, telling the wife what to do.  But at home, the wife is superior, ordering the man around.  It may be understood as reflecting the stereotype of men and women in the Chinese tradition, but it clearly demonstrates the two "separate but equal" domains wherein men and women claim superiority -- a footnote to the yin/yang dichotomy.


     Economic growth in China since the 1980s also posts a threat to family relations.  In the old days, there were not many opportunities for one to get rich, and the husband and wife spent quality time together, even though their possessions were insignificant.  But as the number of their possessions grew, as epitomized by the food on the table, the distance between the couple also enlarged.  It should be noted that such a change in the family's economic status took place in a relatively short period of time, and, as a result the dislocation of the old social fiber, thus was more conspicuous.

The breakdown of  family relations usually began with men looking for extra-marital thrills.  Statistics indicate that the majority of those who are in power or have accumulated wealth have mistresses, which is usually taken to be a symbol of success, although usually the practice is not publicly accepted.  In this cartoon, while a man is blatantly charming a modern girl behind the back of his wife, they bump into the wife and his son.  Even though he is trying hard to cover up and escape the attention of the wife, the boy, to the father's chagrin, identifies him.

Deng Xiaoping, the late-Chinese leader whom the Chinese remember as "General Designer of the Economic Reform," drove the reform by promising to "let some of us get rich first."  The result is  increasing social inequality.  This social inequality, in turn, created an imbalance in  family relations.  The husband and wife in this cartoon get into a fight, with the wife accusing her husband of being incapable of making more money and pointing to the neighbor who just bought a new car to humiliate her husband.  The husband returns fire by pointing out that the very same neighbor has a new wife, too.
            

 

                   Changing Family Relations

 


In almost all societies, the family proves  the most important component; but  in Chinese society, it has occupied an even more venerated place than in other cultures.  In past centuries, many scholars of China look into the Chinese family as a key to their research, and their findings have contributed to the understanding of Chinese culture.  The usually accepted assumption is that the Chinese family occupies a place parallel to civil society in the West.  In Liang Su-ming's scheme, both Chinese and Western societies appear to have a diamond-shape structure, with smaller groups of upper and lower classes on the top and  bottom, and a large component in the middle.  The difference is that, in the West, civil society is in the middle, whereas, in China, the family is.  The memorable writer Ba Jin added more flavor to the role of the family in his novel The Family.  Whatever the role of the family had been in China, developments in the past two decades have brought dramatic changes to the Chinese family.  The following collection of cartoons shows these changes from many different perspectives.

 

One of the most damaging effects that the Cultural Revolution had on Chinese society was the dismantling of the family.  This most enduring social fiber was torn apart by Chairman Mao's distorted ideology of class struggle, which places the elimination of class divisions through confrontation  above any existing social relations, including family.  As a result, it was not uncommon to see that father and son broke up because of different political beliefs and affiliations.  In this cartoon, the frame on the top shows the kind of family relations plagued by the ideology of "class struggle," and the one at the bottom shows that the family, with the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1979, was restored its former closeness.


This cartoon was originally published in Japan, but once it was republished in a Chinese magazine, it enjoyed great popularity, because it, too, reflects a new trend of family relations in China.  The old image of a Chinese woman who is timid and obedient, bossed around by their husband, does not exist in real life.  The balance of power within a family has not so much to do with gender as with other factors, such as personalities.  This may be one of the aspects of culture that almost every society shares.



The change in family relations included a strengthening of the horizontal relation between husband and wife and a weakening of the vertical one between two generations.  In his wedding, the man introduces the bride to his father, whose pathetic apparel is exaggerated by the cartoonist to amplify the sharp contrast between these two kinds of family relations.

This social critiques of this weakening of the vertical family relation between parent and children, however, tends to take on a different perspective.   This cartoon portrays the relation between husband and wife as an independent social unit  responsible for the weakening of the vertical relation between parent and children.  As shown in this cartoon, the couple are having a good time swinging in love, while their love hangs on the cane of the old man.

     Tradition obligated grown children to support their aged parents, and those who refused to do so often became a target for social criticisms. With the rapid social changes in recent decades, more and more younger folks tend to shun this responsibility, which has become a common topic for cartoonists.  The two siblings in this cartoon are tossing their old mother back and forth like a volleyball, neither willing to take care of her.

 


One of the most important things to remember when one approaches China is to avoid simplifying the complexity of Chinese society.  In other words, when one sees the picture of the Pudong district in Shanghai, be reminded that not all China is like that, just like one cannot generalize a scene from Manhattan to the entire US, because Montana is clearly different.  Furthermore, the differences in culture are no less significant than differences in appearance.  The figures shown in this cartoon wear outfits indicating that they are from the country, and for country folks, family relations revolve a different axis.  Before the child is grown, his father tells him to begin sharing the burden of supporting the family by becoming a peddler.

 

 

                                One-Child Policy

 

    The one-child policy is probably one of the best-known features of Chinese culture.  Any discourse about the Chinese family that fails to address the one-child policy is incomplete.  The information that we have access to here in the West tends to present one picture, usually a stain on the human rights record of the Chinese regime.  From the Chinese perspective, however, one can easily identify more complications in the implementation of the policy.  First, the role of the government, which has been shrinking through the past two decades, may not be as totalitarian as many people thought when it comes to the one-child policy; and, second, there is an increasingly prevalent tendency for parents to have fewer children, maybe not necessarily one, as the government recommends, but certainly no longer a line of them.  This is particularly true for most urban residents.  Such change is, in one way, a reflection of the rising status of women in the society. 


The implementation of the one-child policy varied greatly across the large and diverse country.  Unlike what the "human-rights fighters" accuse the Chinese government of doing, in many areas the government was considered too soft, rather than too harsh, in pushing through the policy.  As a result, the population growth remains a major concern.  The cartoon here shows a government official coming to a village every year to post a sign that says, "Planning Your Family is Good for You!" which is translated by the people into "Please have one child only."  But no action was taken against people who had more than one child.  And the year after when he comes again, the couple who stand by watching have one more child, and another one the year after.

During the mid-eighties, The Chinese government  declared the one-child policy  the "basic national policy" for China, and the media joined in the campaign to discourage families from having multi-children. The families that tend to have many children are those from the countryside, where  loosening government control leads to mushrooming of small private businesses.  This hands-off tendency  in rural areas led to laxity in implementing  the one-child policy, as well. The cartoon shows a woman who has a business to grow and retail bean sprouts.  Her six children, because of lack of adequate care and nutrition, all look like bean sprouts. The cartoonist thus grants the woman a nickname called, "bean-sprout production specialist."

For families who have more than one child, the most severe penalty is to lose one's job in the government and to be fined.  For those who do not work in the public sector, the worst consequence is to pay the fine, like this one in the cartoon.  Therefore, there is clearly a class dimension in the implementation of the one-child policy: if you can afford it, go ahead and have as many kids as you want.  This, from another angle, explains the sustaining difficulty in implementing the one-child policy.

 


This cartoon, captioned "The family on the fourth floor have four little girls," deserves some more commentary.  It can be approached from two directions.  First, the "blown-up" apartment at night suggests a high volume of activity taking place within the apartment, and the activity seems to come from parents who probably are not happy with having four kids, none of whom are boys.  Second, this cartoon may be a sexist critique of the family with four girls, for it suggests that girls are "noisy."  In 1980s China, however, such a sexist approach was not inappropriate, particularly when one needed to discourage families from having more than one child.  The message is clear here: if you keep having kids because you want to have a boy, be prepared to endure the loud noise that girls will create for your family environment.  

One very important reason for some families to have more than one child is the parents' concern for their own livelihood after they lose their ability to work.  To have a son appears to be the best way to secure one's future with no income.  But not all cartoons satirically expose the negative side of  society.  This poster shows a newly wedded couple who are happily accepting each other's parents.  The sign below reads, "It is the same to have a girl as to have a boy, and your mother will be treated the same as my mother is."  This cartoon is an obvious example of propaganda.


This is another typical poster for the one-child policy, with a caption that reads, "Father, mother, and I."  Noticeable is that it is done by a 10-year-old, and it reflects what the policy is like in the eyes of a child.  The one-child campaign has been very powerful and remains an underlying force in almost every walk of life in the country.  From the cartoon, we can infer that the policy works much better in the urban areas, where the population is much better educated. 

 

This cartoon takes the idea from one of the most popular writers in China, Lu Xun.  In Lu's story, Kong Yiji, he describes the story's namesake, a stubborn old Confucian scholar who shares his peas with kids in the neighborhood.  Lu vividly portrays Kong as a bookworm when he speaks to the kids in classical Chinese, which he is reading from the Analect: "Are there many left?  Not many left."  This sentence subsequently became the popular modern culture's trademark for any stubborn mind.  The cartoonist here borrows this idea and suggests that those who have more than one child are as stubborn as Kong Yiji. 

      

                                    Child Rearing

 

    Almost a necessary effect of the one-child policy, child-rearing in China also changed greatly.  Specialists of China use the term "upside-down pyramid" to describe the social structure after the one-child policy had been implemented for over two decades.  In other words, with every child there are two parents who themselves do not have any siblings, and above the two parents are four grandparents, who are expecting their children to support them. 

    One striking difference between child-rearing in China and that in the US is that, in China, the growth of the child, physically, intellectually, and spiritually (as you may infer from the cartoons below), appears to have been programmed and subsequently closely monitored by the parents.  This tendency has no doubt enhanced the family bond, on one hand, but  reduced the independence of the child, on the other.  Particularly, with little room for their own choice, children tend to polarize after they grow up -- they may be either very rebellious or very docile.  And the differences between the Chinese culture and Western culture may be explained in part by the differences in  child-rearing.

 

In the US, university professors are usually quite impressed by the academic performance of their Chinese students.  Indeed, in contrast to American students, Chinese students tend to have a much heavier study load throughout their K-12 years.  The average day for them is usually fully scheduled with many classes, and their evenings, too, are occupied with homework.  The backpack that appears to break the young student's back may be an exaggeration, but it is not that far away from the truth.   


The one-child policy has had a profound impact on society at large, particularly in terms of child-rearing.  Now that most families have only one child, all the hopes for the future of both parents' families are placed on his or her tender shoulders.  The parents' expectations of the child tend to be very high, hoping that he or she will become the greatest artist, scientist, scholar, star, or leaders.  For that purpose, they put tremendous pressure on the child, which sometimes has some effect but  is usually accompanied by unavoidable side-effects, as seen in the plain expression of the little girl in the cartoon, when her parents insist that she play the violin.

Despite the not-yet wealthy family economy, the only child tends to have almost whatever he wants and whatever the parents can get.  The child thus acquires the nickname "little emperor."  The cartoon shows one of them, whose daily menu consists of this collection of what the parents think to be healthy food.  But apparently the kid doesn't  like it: He reacts to the feast, not with pleasure but with a profound sense of resignation.

There is no law limiting the drinking age in China, and the children usually get the last few sips of whatever is in Dad's bottle.  This practice is becoming a concern of many people who keep their watchful eyes on society.  In addition to the health of the children, the loose control over minor drinking is partly responsible for the making of a people who spend close to half of their income on food and alcohol consumption.

 

An ironic side in China's child-rearing is that, although parents are more inclined to spoil the children, they seem to ignore the detrimental effect that some adults' conduct has on the children.  In this cartoon, the pregnant woman is visiting her doctor.  When she asks her doctor, "What did you hear?" the doctor answers, "The baby's coughing."


The deterioration of the socialist system and economic reform has had a detrimental effect on the education system.  Under-funded, public school administrators are forced to open up revenues to cover the expenses.   They shrewdly transfer the burden onto the students by creating numerous fees that students have to pay in order to properly function in school.  This cartoon shows that on his way to school, the student is blocked by the ocean of fees, including fees of "sponsorship," "luncheon," "movie," and "handout," among other things.


Most parents tend to think that, after passing 40, the focus of their life has changed; career is no longer the primary concern.  Instead, the growth of their child occupies almost every space of the family life.  So that the child will succeed in the highly competitive world, many parents will lower themselves and play the role of a "human ladder," using a Chinese term.  The misconception is that the parents place too much emphasis on  allowing the child to devote his or her entire life to studying.  To do so, the parents usually take over every single household chore, even washing their teenage child's feet, as seen in the cartoon.  The result is that the child becomes highly dependent on the parents, a phenomenon quite common among today's college students in China.


The tendency of parents to spoil their (only) child brings up an issue that has begun to worry many social critics.  Children who grow up under parents' protective wings tend to develop a very weak sense of reality and responsibility, for they are so used to taking things for granted.  Here the cartoon shows a college student supported by his mother, who makes a hard living by peddling popsicles in the street.  But the young man does not seem to appreciate the hardship his mother is going through, for he is enjoying a nice meal in a fancy restaurant.   

 

       

 

 

The content of this page is the sole responsibility of Yi Li, TCC history instructor.  The academic materials and classroom policies presented here apply to these classes only.  Please refer to the college catalog for college administrative practices and policies.