Pictorial & machine age · 1925–1990 · East Asia

Lianhuanhua Picture-Story Books

Also known as Linked pictures, Xiaorenshu (little people's books), Chinese serial-picture storybooks

Palm-sized Chinese picture books, about three by five inches, that tell a novel, opera, film or revolutionary story in hundreds of single framed drawings, one to a page, each with a short caption. Interiors are black ink line drawings, from fine classical-costume outline to realist sketching, with colour kept for the cover. Rented and read at street stalls, they were the most popular reading of 20th-century China until television and manga displaced them from the late 1980s.

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A vintage-style Chinese illustrated poster has a mountain-and-sun header above four numbered panels showing a boy and his dog hiking, spotting smoke, running toward a burning village, and watching villagers carry buckets to fight the fire. Dark engraved-style linework covers textured cream paper, with a large red Chinese title and a yellow sun. — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

How it works

Give each page one framed picture and a short caption block above, below or beside it; avoid multi-panel grids.
Draw the interior in black ink line, from fine outline for classical subjects to hatched realism for modern ones.
Stage the story cinematically, varying viewpoint, distance and close-up from page to page.
Keep colour for the cover, where a painted scene sits under a hand-drawn title.
Make the format small, cheap and rentable, so a story runs across hundreds of frames in a pocket-sized book.

Shanghai, where Shijie Shuju (World Book Company) adopted the name in 1925 and street-stall publishers multiplied; after 1949 state presses such as the People's Fine Arts Publishing House and Shanghai People's Fine Arts Publishing House

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition: Framed panels defining
Classical text block occasional
Space & hierarchy: Sequential narrative defining
Layered information characteristic
Measured density characteristic
Illusion of depth characteristic
Typography: Hand-lettering characteristic
Brush & pen calligraphy occasional
Colour: Monochrome defining
Light ground characteristic
Full polychrome occasional
Form & shape: Naturalistic depiction characteristic
Stylised figuration characteristic
Surface & texture: Flat characteristic
Paper & letterpress bite occasional
Ornament: Restrained accents characteristic
Borders & frames occasional
Imagery: Line illustration defining
Comic & cartoon characteristic
Painterly illustration occasional
Straight photography occasional
Medium & production: Offset printing characteristic
Lithography characteristic
Pen, brush & ink characteristic
Tone & intent: Communal & popular defining
Authoritative & institutional characteristic
Warm & approachable occasional
Playful & witty occasional
Avoids: Typography only, Collage & layering, Full bleed, Experimental & distorted, Non-representational, Fluorescent & neon, Ironic & self-aware

Palette

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Typefaces

Songti (Ming) and Kaiti printing types for captions
Hand-drawn meishuzi ('art lettering') cover titles
Brush calligraphy titles on classical-story covers

Known for

Shen Manyun, Arrest of the Orchid
Republican-era Shanghai
Zhao Hongben and Qian Xiaodai, Sun Wukong Thrice Defeats the White-Bone Demon
1962
He Youzhi, Great Changes in a Mountain Village
Shanxiang jubian, 1961–65
Ding Bingzeng and Han Heping, Railway Guerrillas
Tiedao youjidui; nearly 4 million copies
Shanghai People's Fine Arts Publishing House

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The words on it No lettering at all

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Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleLianhuanhua Picture-Story Books1925–1990 · East Asia

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

刘胡蘭 Liu Hulan (picture-story poster, one of two sheets: six panels)Li Jiyuan, Meng Qingjiang, Wang Jiao and Zhang Guanghe (pictures); Zheng Yongpei (verse) · 1973 · Royal Danish Library (Det Kgl. Bibliotek), Copenhagen, Chinese poster collection (kob_kin_pl_0042, shelf mark Kob-kin-42/43)
学习雷锋好榜样 Learn from the Good Example of Lei Feng (picture-story poster, panels 1–2)He Youzhi · 1973 (3rd printing, August 1973; 1st printing July 1973) · Royal Danish Library (Det Kgl. Bibliotek), Copenhagen, Chinese poster collection (kob_kin_pl_0046, shelf mark Kob-kin-46/47)
司马懿诈病赚曹爽 (Sima Yi Feigns Illness to Trick Cao Shuang), panel from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms lianhuanhuaFeng Monong (冯墨农), as named by the uploader · 1957 (edition named by the uploader; the scan's source edition is unidentified and may be a later reprint) · Wikimedia Commons (no holding institution identified)

Sources

Wikipedia, 'Lianhuanhua' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lianhuanhua)
Huntington Archive, Ohio State University, 'Literature in Line: Picture Stories in the Chinese Tradition' (https://huntingtonarchive.org/Exhibitions/litInLine.php)

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