Featuring an illustrated form of printed entertainment once thought to be only for children, this past April at Beijing’s Panjiayuan Antique Market was held a picture-story book fair. The largest of its kind in Northern China in terms of scale, the event generated a total business volume of several million yuan in a single week. One fan drove from Dalian with eight trunks full of picture-story books, attracting a crowd the moment he set up his booth. The eight trunks of books finally sold for a total of more than one million yuan. The popularity of the fair and the goods being marketed motivated the operators of the Panjiayuan Antique Market to hold a second picture-story book fair just four months later, in August.
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An assortment of picture-story books.
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Big with Kids
Picture-story books combine features of art and literature, and resemble Western-style pocket books. Comparatively small in size, picture-story books are usually 60 mo or 64 mo. On each page there is an illustration with a few lines of text, and in succession the pictures tell a complete story. Stories in these books are usually derived from works of literature and movies. Due to vivid illustrations, simple words, and easy-to-carry size, the medium is popular with teenagers and children. This is why in China they are also called children’s picture-story books.
In 1925, Shanghai World Book published Dream of The Red Chamber and Journey to The West, two of China’s classical literary masterpieces with the added title of “picture-story book;” hence the name.
After 1949 and the founding of the People’s Republic of China, subjects which frequently appeared in picture-story books that reflected social reality, and which were warmly received by readers, included matters like developing a new country, the election of people’s representatives, and the promulgation of Constitution Law and Marriage Law. Since the Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House published Railway Guerilla, a ten-volume picture-story book series depicting the Chinese people’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggressors during World War II, the set of books were re-imprinted 20 times with a total impression of 36.52 million copies, a rarely-seen and substantial volume in the history of picture-story book publishing. And picture-story books based on such traditional subject matters as literary classics, historical stories, and legends were sold at even greater numbers because of their high quality. With increasing sales in the domestic market, picture-story books also began to win popularity abroad.
Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House published the first volume of their sixty-volume The Romance of the Three Kingdoms in 1957, and did not complete the run until five years later. In Germany in the 1960s, the set of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms garnered the Honor Award in Leipzig International Book Fair. It not only became a classic among Chinese picture-story books, but also a treasured collectable.
The 1950s to 1970s was a time when cartoons were not popular in China and network games had not yet emerged, so the reading of picture-story books became a major entertainment trend for many kids. In 1982, picture-story books reached a development peak in China, with a total publication of more than 2,100 varieties up to 860 million copies, accounting for one third of the nation’s total volume of book publishing.
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In a picture-story book auction in 2005 inChongqingMunicipality, the pictured set was sold for 18,000 yuan.
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Advanced as an Art Collectable
In the past 50 years, picture-story books have gained huge popularity in China. However, with the prevalence of TV and emergence of computers, people’s access to reading and way of lives has undergone great change. Picture-story books became a popular collection item from children books.
Now, along with seven other collectable commodities, such as stamps, antiques, painting, works of calligraphy, and ancient coins, picture-story books are listed among the top eight items most worthy to be collected in China. Yang Hongfu, member of China Artists Association Picture-story Books Art Committee, called this phenomenon “A speed-up process of fossilization.” And he says, “The time for picture-story books to become a collection from publication is so short that it only takes about 20 years.”
Qin Jie, vice-dean of the Book, Newspapers, and Periodicals Collection Committee of China Association of Collectors, believes that “scarce goods are precious” is the cause of this picture-story book collection fever. Although picture-story books published long ago enjoy a broad range of readership and wide circulation, there are very few preserved in complete sets. “From 1949 to 1966, there were altogether more than 1,000 varieties of picture-story books published. However, since there are not many good-quality and well-preserved ones circulating in the collection market, their prices are quite high. Picture-story books published before that time are in even greater demand. I have one set of Battle in LinyiCity, a story about Chinese people’s war of resistance against Japanese aggression, published in 1938. The book only had altogether 16 pages and the then marked price is five cents. I bought it for 20 yuan several years ago at Beijing Panjiayuan Antique Market. And now the market price for this book is four or five thousand yuan,” says Qin.
Moreover, picture-story books of old editions are worthy to be collected for their high artistic value. Many illustrators of these books are China’s state-of-the-art artistic workers. Master of traditional Chinese painting Zhu Qizhan, renowned painter such as Chen Yifei and Chen Danqing have created illustrations for picture-story books.
At present, according the China Association of Collectors, there are more than 40 million picture-story book fans, among which 80 percent are doing so merely out of their love for the books. These collectors share their childhood memories by collecting picture-story books and even becoming friends. Not only a good companion in childhood, picture-story books continue to add fun to the lives of adults.
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Traditional format of a picture-story book. A single illustration is accompanied by a few lines of text. |
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Picture-story books in the library attract readers of all ages. |
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