It’s wonderful when parents do right by their kids, in spite of themselves. Ding Cong’s father was a famous cartoonist, yet refused to teach his son to draw, believing that virtually any other career path would be more rewarding. Doing something while telling your child he can’t will get him to try everything from smoking to patching a roof. In Ding Cong’s case, nothing could keep him from the colored pencils, and by 17 he was publishing, never to alter his cartooning course.

But our purpose here is to present Ding Cong as an artist, and not in the spirit of generosity with which one might also call Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, an artist. In the first place, although his subject matter is almost without exception straightforward and entertaining, it also boasts a sophistication, a graphic insight and wordlessly wry commentary, that makes him at least as much artist as cartoonist.

The time he lived in no doubt helped him develop his marvelous sense of humor, as a weapon to wield against iniquity and decadence. Born in 1915, he did plenty of propaganda work along with his own, against both the Japanese invasion and Communist insurgents. Someone on the People’s Committee must have been a fan, for his subversive work never earned him a reprisal other than a quiet censorship, and that not until 1957.

So can you call a cartoonist an artist? You be the judge.

Refusing Banquets: "Don't worry! The Head is on a diet."

Ding Cong has a sharp nose for the folly power inspires, no matter what ideology it comes cloaked in. A good cartoonist makes you laugh, an artist can make you laugh and cry simultaneously.

What We Have Seen in Chengdu

A well-worn theme for social commentary, to be sure, but such pathos and gluttony side by side raise the emotional effect. And how often do you see light and shadow employed with such skill by a mere cartoonist?

Empiricist: The back door should open eventually.

The sign says "Please use the front entrance." Who's to say the delivery man is lazy? Much larger wrongs are committed in the name of scientific experimentation.

                              Li Lilli                                               Wang Renmei

All the sensitivity to society's plight in the world won't help you with women. Anyone get the idea Mr. Ding sees the fairer sex as more than a little scary?

     The Story of Getting the Fur: I                                    The Story of Getting the Fur: II

Then again, maybe he has a point.

Three Monks Want to Have Tea