Cartoons that amuse and inspire
Print Edition
GAO Jinming, 81, didn’t start drawing comics until six years ago. He has only one purpose in creating stories through comics: family education.
The Gumei area amateur cartoonist does his drawings freehand on sketch paper, then adds colors and background with Photoshop software. He can also skillfully use a digital painting board.
Da Da and Xiao Xiao are the two leading characters in Gao’s comics. Da Da is a grandfather and Xiao Xiao is his grandson. The main story line follows the efforts of the grandfather to teach the child how to become a responsible, kind citizen, while sometimes mocking the education system.
“People always say it is not good for grandparents to try to educate grandchildren, but I don’t agree,” said Gao. “As long as the concept is right, grandparents can be great educators.”
Before retiring, Gao was a high school teacher and then an administrator at East China University of Political Science and Law. Drawing has been a lifelong hobby, but this is the first time Gao has created his own project around that.
Gao has education in his blood. While teaching, he despaired that so many students focused solely on examinations, while neglecting to cultivate personal qualities.
After retirement, he decided to do something about that. His first effort was to write a book entitled “100 Fables: How Children with No Siblings Survive in Society.” The book was published in 2005, but wasn’t a market success.
About the same time, public discussion was heating up about the role of grandparents in family education. Most people believed that grandparents harbor “out-of-date concepts” that don’t fit the mold of modern development and that Chinese grandparents tend to spoil children too much.
Gao said he had strong opinions on such stereotyping, but he didn’t know how to express his thoughts. In 2010, he decided to use his love of drawing as a gateway.
“The German comic series ‘Father and Son’ was popular across the world,” he said. “It depicted very well familial relationships that were both hilarious and inspiring. I wanted to draw comics just like that.”
The character traits were set right at the start. Da Da is a bald old man with a moustache, while Xiao Xiao is a little boy with the kind of hairstyle usually seen in traditional Spring Festival paintings.
“Da Da’s eyebrows look just like mine,” he said. “He is an ideal image of me.”
The first challenge was to depict the interaction between grandfather and grandson properly. Gao said he didn’t get to spend much time with his grandson, so he had to watch what others did to round out the comic.
He went to Nanjing Road E, a busy commercial street in the city, with a camera and took photos of grandparents with their grandchildren.
Another challenge was to create the storyline. He often talked with other seniors he knew, listening to their stories about their grandchildren. Inspired by them, he finished his first work called “I Have a Baby, Too” in March 2010.
In one of the stories, Xiao Xiao was forced to recite Pi by his mother for a kindergarten contest and Da Da was ignored, but Xiao Xiao said he would “kill all the number” when he grows up. Da Da was not happy about it.
Since 2010, Gao has drawn 56 short-story comics featuring Da Da and Xiao Xiao, and the comics are published in the Gumei community newspaper.
“I spend most of the time thinking up new stories,” he said. “I find inspiration in everything, books, movies, TV shows. I sometimes think of something in the middle of night and get up to jot the idea down, lest I forget it in the morning.”
Gao said he also spends a lot of time improving the sketches, such as the characters’ facial structures and expressions. Every day he spends more than two hours on his work.
“I don’t have many hobbies or lofty life goals,” he said. “Da Da and Xiao Xiao have become my life now. I just hope that families will be inspired by my works.”
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