Lianhuanhua: China’s Pulp Comics

[Randy W]

from China Pictorial on Facebook 
https://www.facebook.com/553929144732479/posts/3644928905632472/

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#Lianhuanhua, a kind of palm-sized booklet with picture stories and accompanying text, has been a cultural icon in the history of China. Soon after it emerged in the early 20th century, lianhuanhua became quite the draw for various bookstores, libraries, and book-renting stalls before foreign comic books entered the Chinese market. With a wide variety of subjects, attractive illustrations and interesting stories, as many as 100 million copies of lianhuanhua circulated annually at their peak, and they remain central figures in the memories of generations of Chinese people.#

[Randy W]

from The Comics Journal OCT 17, 2014

Lianhuanhua: China’s Pulp Comics

Readers at an outdoor rental, Hong Kong, 1947. Source: Hong Wrong.

“Solo was going to fire again but suddenly an invisible force swept up his pistol and delivered it to Vader’s hands.” Diguo Fanjizhan (The Emperor Strikes Back), 1982.

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Most of the lianhuanhua that can still be found in China were printed in the late 1970s and 1980s during the last heyday of pulp comic publishing, but their history reaches back much farther. The lianhuanhua industry began in Shanghai during the 1920s and 30s, though some scholars trace the origins of the format to Song Dynasty scrolls. Using newly imported printing techniques, publishers began releasing periodicals that contained stories and illustrations. They called these works “lianhuanhua” (linked images), though there were various regional names. Some of these stories were text accompanied by images while others used speech bubbles or text inserted into the image. The most popular series from the magazines were reprinted in palm-size paperbacks, and before long rental shops sprung up in alleyways throughout the city. For a few coins, patrons could sit down on wooden stools and read several dozen lianhuanhua.