Ji Zhaohua and His Drawings

This article is written by Lao Liu, nickname of Zhang Lixian (张立宪), editor of Book Reservoir (读库, Duku) . You can read the original article on his blog. I translated some parts of it into English.



Eleven years ago when I was working for a magazine, a little boy would often come to our house to hang around and see what we were doing. If there was an article that needed illustrations, he would pick up a sheet of paper by hand and draw the pictures for us.


That little boy is called Ji Zhaohua (姬炤华). Eleven years later, he contacted me. He has got a family and career, and become Mr. Ji.


We had that reunion which came after eleven years through emails. I had a feeling from our correspondence that he was calm and peaceful, sturbbon and straightforward, with an air of old-fashioned manner . He was no longer the little boy eleven years ago indeed.


He contacted me for the matter of his teacher's manuscript. I asked him how his career as an illustrator was. He replied that he hadn't published comic drawings for many years, and that he wasn't optimistic about this field in China. He only attended international competitions occasionally and had done alright.


For these recent years, Ji Zhaohua and his wife have beeing exploring in children's literature. They write as well as draw ilustrations for some publishing houses in Taiwan. In March 2008, their first drawing book No! That's Wrong was published in the USA. The frist edition of that book has been sold out. Now they are working on their second book.


I asked him to draw bookplates (ex-libris) for Book Reservoir, and he sent me a couple of drawings he had done before, each of which was of different style. I picked one and used it in the 0803 issue of Book Reservoir.


Soon after the New Year of 2009, I received an e-mail from Ji Zhaohua. In it was a new bookplate dedicated to Book Reservoir. A pile of books fell off his hands when a poor intellectual was moving them. The page of one falling book was transparent, which reflected the man's sleeve like a glass, in which the sleeve was brand new and decorated with beatiful patterns. The illustration was both classic and surreal.


The technique he used in that drawing was fine and meticulous strokes which can be found in traditional Gongbi. The paper he used was handmade watercolour paper made in Britain. "The drawing is sort of a combination of Sino-Western elements. The surface of the paper is not smooth, which gives it a fantastic texture. Drawing on it has a quality of fresco." explained Ji Zhaohua.

I was so fond of it that I phoned him and asked him if he could make the bookplates a series, so that I could use them for this year's 6 issues of Book Reservoir.


He said yes.


A friend in Shanghai wanted to introduce Zhang Dachun's novels into Peopel's Republic of China, and she needed some one who could do the illustrations for them. I recommened Ji Zhaohua to her, and showed her that drawing. It is so vivid as if the person was alive. She praised


Later I phoned Ji Zhaohua and asked him if he was interested. Please give me some time to think about it. He answerd.


The next day he replied, Can I drop it? I just have the fear that too many tasks could reduce the quality of my drawings.


I passed on his reply to my friend, who said, I really hope he can be an established figure in drawing some day. He's very careful about what he should not do. I really admire that.


* To see more drawings by Ji Zhaohua, you can go to his blog: 黑云翻墨未遮山

Bookplate for the 0905 issue of Book Reservoir

Caesar kicked away a bundle of maps, shouting: "More!" Within a blink, millions of lives turned into white bones. From that moment on, things on that land, underneath which lied the wrongly smitten souls, were changed: ethnics, langauges, words, architecture, painting, music... such a change is upside-down and irrevocable. Today, we call the result of that change "tradition", and the process of that change "merging".