page_title: Ye Qianyu
section_title: Career in Shanghai
hierarchical_section_title: Ye Qianyu / Career in Shanghai
caption_attribution_description: "Unfortunate Love". Cover for Shanghai Manhua issue 9 (Jun. 16, 1928)
context_page_description: Ye Qianyu was a Chinese painter and pioneering manhua artist. In 1928, he cofounded Shanghai Manhua, one of the earliest and most influential manhua magazines, and created Mr. Wang, one of China's most famous comic strips.
  Ye was also a master of traditional Chinese painting and served as the head of the Department of Chinese Painting of the China Central Academy of Fine Arts. During the Cultural Revolution he was persecuted and imprisoned for seven years.
  Ye was married three times. His first two marriages, to Luo Caiyun and dancer Dai Ailian, ended in divorce. His third marriage, to movie star Wang Renmei, lasted more than 30 years until Wang's death.
context_section_description: At age 18 Ye moved to Shanghai, where he found work at a small, short-lived journal Sanri Huabao (Three Day Pictorial). The journal shut down when Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition army reached Shanghai in April 1927.
  Out of work, Ye Qianyu, then 20 years old, together with fellow cartoonists Huang Wennong and Lu Shaofei released a publication dedicated to manhua, called Shanghai Manhua (or Shanghai Sketch). The first effort looked like a propaganda poster and was a failure.  Undeterred, the original three, joined by eight more artists including Zhang Guangyu, Ding Song, and Wang Dunqing, formed the Shanghai Sketch Society (also translated as Shanghai Cartoon Association) in the autumn of 1927. It was China's first association dedicated to manhua, and its debut was a major event in the history of Chinese comics.
  Under the leadership of Zhang Guangyu, who recruited the wealthy poet Shao Xunmei as a sponsor, the association successfully relaunched the Shanghai Manhua on 21 April 1928. Ye drew several covers for the magazine and the back page of the publication carried his comic strip, Mr. Wang. Inspired by the American strip Bringing Up Father and portraying the daily life of the middle and lower classes of Shanghai, Mr. Wang became one of China's most famous cartoons, eventually being made into 11 films in the 1930s and 40s.
  In June 1930 Shanghai Manhua was merged into Modern Miscelleny (or Modern Pictorial, 时代画报), of which Ye became an editor while continuing his Mr. Wang series.
  In September 1936, Ye Qianyu, Lu Shaofei, and Zhang Guangyu organized the First National Cartoon Exhibition in Shanghai. It displayed over 600 cartoons from all over the country. After the overwhelming success of the exhibition, the artists formed the National Association of Chinese Cartoonists in the spring of 1937. The blossoming movement, however, was brought to a halt by the Japanese invasion a few months later.
caption: Ye's Unfortunate Love, cover for Shanghai Manhua, 16 June 1928
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "2787", "Image ImageLength": "3369", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2013:11:07 21:34:26", "Image ExifOffset": "232", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "382", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "10796", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2787", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3369"}