Source: Associaton for Chinese Animation Studies (7/13/24)
A Parting Shot: Liao Bingxiong’s “Slippery Poem-Pictures” and the 1957 Rectification Movement
By John A. Crespi
The Hundred Flowers Movement, launched in May 1956 and culminating in Mao Zedong’s call to critique the Chinese Communist Party during the Rectification Movement of May and June 1957, was a bonanza for China’s manhua. During that span of about a year, China’s cartoonists were granted free rein to take aim at the favorite target of satirists everywhere: their own ruling regime.
Or so it seemed. Today, of course, we know that the Rectification Movement ended abruptly with the Anti-rightist Movement, when Mao cut off the flood of criticism he had himself summoned by persecuting untold thousands of intellectuals. How far did China’s manhua artists push the boundaries of critique when responding to the call to “rectify” the party? It is hazardous to generalize; an extensive study of manhua through this period is waiting to be undertaken. Here I offer a brief look at just one prominent example of a manhua caught in the ideological crossfire: Cantonese artist Liao Bingxiong’s 廖冰兄 (1915-2006) “Slippery Poem-Pictures” (dayou cihua 打油词话), published on page 5 of China’s leading satirical art magazine, Manhua Semi-monthly (Manhua banyue kan 漫画半月刊), on July 8, 1957.[1]
Figure 1: Liao Bingxiong’s “Slippery Poem-Pictures,” original Chinese with English scanlation.
Figure 1 shows two versions of “Slippery Poem-Pictures”: the original Chinese above and a scanlation below. The scanlation, in which the Chinese text has been digitally replaced by an English translation, captures, I hope, at least some of Liao’s caustic verbal humor.[2] The manhua as a whole comprises four non-bordered panels. In each, Liao complements the drawing with two four-line stanzas of rhymed doggerel, and in two instances also provides a few lines of background information. The title of the manhua addresses “the dogmatists.” An example of the period’s Maospeak, dogmatism 教条主义 refers to ideologically motivated, and widely resented, strictures that Chinese communist bureaucrats imposed on political and cultural work. The four panels of “Slippery Poem-Pictures” call out absurdities of official interference specific to the realm of culture. Moving clockwise from the top left panel, these include application of Stanislavskian method acting to folk opera, in this case the Legend of the White Snake; the reduction of visual artists to “robots” of policy; excessive editorial cuts to literary writing, and a theoretical tract proposing a class-based aesthetics of color.
Figure 2: The first four panels of “Slippery Poem-Pictures,” as featured on the cover of Manhua Semi-monthly no. 90 on June 8, 1957.
Even a cursory look at Liao’s “Slippery Poem-Pictures” reveals that it is not, and was not meant to be, subtle. There are, however, certain subtleties to how and when “Slippery Poem-Pictures” came to be published in Manhua Semi-monthly at such a decisive political moment. First, it must be noted that these four panels represent only the second half of an eight-panel set. The first four panels, also entitled “Slippery Poem-Pictures,” had been featured on the cover of Manhua Semi-monthly thirty days previously, for the June 8, 1957, no. 90 issue, well within the one-month window of the Rectification Movement (fig. 2). By the time the second set of four panels appeared exactly a month later in the July 8 issue, the Anti-rightist Movement was underway and the magazine’s editors had begun to shift ideological gears. For instance, the cover illustration from July 8 depicts a clownish “rightist” standing under the bright sun of “Socialism,” but shaded by a giant brown mushroom labeled “anti-socialist sentiment” that has sprouted from his presumably decaying brain (fig. 3). The issue’s back cover, meanwhile, caricatures several of the first high-profile targets of the Anti-rightist Movement, such as the People’s University lecturer Ge Peiqi 葛佩琦 and Guangming Daily editor Chu Anping 储安平. What is more, inside the magazine the editors devoted the entire page opposite Liao’s “Slippery Poem-Pictures” to a 3000-word criticism of Liao’s cover art from issue 90, and in particular two panels that, according to the pseudonymous author, made “dogmatists” look like “scary, ugly, bumbling, irrational thugs.”[3] Curiously, nowhere in this essay, or anywhere else in issue 92, do we see any commentary on the second set of four panels, which are just as inflammatory as the first four, and were printed prominently on the magazine’s fifth page against a bright yellow background. How, one may well ask, did Liao’s plainly “rightist” manhua get published during the Anti-rightist Movement?
Figure 3: The front cover, drawn by Ye Chunyang 叶春阳, of the July 8 no. 92 issue of Manhua Semi-monthly, in which the second half of “Slippery Poem-Pictures” appeared. The sun is labeled “Socialism” and the mushroom reads “Anti-socialist sentiment.” The figure is saying, “Look, a black sun!”
The explanation comes down in part to timing and in part to Liao Bingxiong’s own commitment to his satirical art. In terms of timing, from submission deadline to publication, it took about a month to produce each issue of Manhua Semi-monthly.[4] Thus the content of issue 92, published July 8, had been assembled in mid-June, when the storm clouds of the Anti-rightist Movement were just appearing on the horizon. As for Liao’s role in the matter, a self-criticism by Manhua’s editors in issue 93 divulges that Liao had insisted on publishing the second part of “Slippery Poem-Pictures” despite the editors’ concerns that the bottom right panel, showing a bureaucrat “doctor” sawing off of a writer’s head, was too politically risky. Liao, the editors added, only overcame their misgivings by promising to take full responsibility for any repercussions.[5]
And repercussions there were. Liao’s drawing of the saw-wielding doctor was included among ten manhua criticized in issue 93 under the heading “Learning from Failure: Some Misguided Manhua from Early in the Rectification Period.” The author of the article seals Liao’s fate in the dry, self-righteous tone typical of the period’s official denunciations:
The extreme prejudice that the author of this manhua, Liao Bingxiong, feels toward authorities in literature and the arts is evident in any number of his works. “Sawing off the head” as shown here might appear to be just a metaphor satirizing the harshness with which some cadres oversee the cultural realm. But isn’t the harshness Liao levels at the party leadership even more harsh than that?[6]
As for Liao himself, he was branded a “rightist,” sent to labor in the countryside, and did not publish another cartoon for the next twenty years.[7]
NOTES:
[1] The magazine was converted from a monthly format, called Manhua yuekan (Manhua monthly) to a twice monthly format, Manhua banyuekan (Manhua semi-monthly), starting with issue 68 on July 8, 1956.
[2] Here I express my gratitude to Li Jiang (Colgate ’17) for assisting with the technical aspects of scanlating this manhua.
[3] Rong Jian 容坚, “Duinei Fengci: Reqingde youmode shuofude piping, jianping Liao Bingxiong tongzhide ‘Dayou Cihua’” 对内讽刺：热情的幽默的说服的批评, 兼评廖冰兄通知的“打油词画” (Internal Satire: Persuasive Criticism through Warm Humor, with a Critique of Comrade Liao Bingxiong’s “Slippery Poem-Pictures”), Manhua banyuekan 漫畫半月刊 (Manhua semi-monthly), no. 92 (July 8, 1957): 4.
[4] Liao Bingxiong et al., “Quanguo manhua tongren dui benkan tichu yijian” 全国漫画同人对本刊提出意见 (Suggestions for Manhua yuekan from China’s Manhua Artists), Manhua banyuekan 漫畫半月刊 (Manhua Semi-Monthly), no. 91 (June 23, 1957): 8. In this multi-author article, the time lag in publication of Manhua is mentioned in comments by the manhua artist Ke Ming 柯明.
[5] Benkan bianjibu 本刊编辑部 (The Editors), “Jiancha womende cuowu” 检查我们的错误 (Reflecting on Our Errors),” Manhua Banyuekan 漫畫半月刊 (Manhua semi-monthly), no. 93 (July 23, 1957): 2.
[6] Sheng Ming 盛名, “Cong Shibai Zhong Xiqu Jiaoxun 从失败中吸取教训 (Learning from Failure: Some Misguided Manhua from Early in the Rectification Period),” Manhua banyuekan 漫畫半月刊 (Manhua semi-monthly), no. 93 (July 23, 1957): 5.
[7] John A. Lent and Xing Xu, “Liao Bingxiong: ‘A Chinese Style Man with Universal Values,’” International Journal of Comic Art 9, no. 1 (2007): 657, 662-665.
Bio:
John A. Crespi is a professor of Chinese at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. He is the author of Voices in Revolution: Poetry and the Auditory Imagination in Modern China (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010) and Manhua Modernity: Chinese Culture and the Pictorial Turn (University of California Press, 2020). His articles on modern Chinese poetry and China’s manhua (cartoons and comics) have appeared in a range of edited volumes and scholarly journals. His online publications include the pathbreaking three-part illustrated essay “China’s Modern Sketch: The Golden Era of Cartoon Art, 1934–1937,” written for MIT’s Visualizing Cultures project. He is the recipient of two Fulbright awards (2005–2006 and 2017).