Annotation

Published as a supplement to the political magazine Wanren zhoukan, Manhua Manhua appears to have been Hong Kong’s second comic strip magazine after Wenrouxiang (1933). Its frontpage (see illustration below) featured an illustration titled ‘China’s present condition’ which consisted mostly crisscrossed lines and messy doodling with a small square in the right bottom corner labelled ‘Hong Kong’. A foreword written for its first issue asks ‘What is the purpose of life? Why shouldn’t we just laugh at others – and let others laugh at ourselves at times?’

Manhua Manhua’s contents consisted mainly of light-hearted, occasionally satirical comic strips featuring social and political events from around the world or tales of male-female relationships, leavened with a few political reviews and two pieces of fiction. Its artists were all famous Cantonese cartoonists such as Lu Li, the creator of many of its strips. Its political articles included a piece comparing British and Hong Kong culture by San Su, who was possibly also the author of a fiction series titled ‘Journey to the West in the Atomic Era’, attributed to Si Su but written in a manner similar to those of San Su’s ‘Told-tales Retold’ or ‘Allusive Story’.