Wan Laiming, born Wan Jiazong in Nanjing on 18 January 1900 and died in Shanghai on 7 October 1997, is regarded, together with his twin brother Wan Guchan, as a founder of Chinese animation. Largely self-taught in drawing, he entered the art department of the Commercial Press in Shanghai in 1919 and later moved to its film division, where he and his brothers experimented with animation. In 1925 the brothers made an animated advertisement for a Chinese typewriter, an early prototype of Chinese animation, and in 1926, at the invitation of Mei Xuechou, they produced Uproar in the Studio for the Great Wall Film Company, the first animated short made in China, going on to draw animation for other studios. In 1940 Xinhua set up a cartoon unit under the brothers, and the following year they completed Princess Iron Fan (1941), the first animated feature in China and Asia. Wan came to Hong Kong in 1949 and joined the art department of Great Wall Pictures, specialising in set production, drawing illustrations and comics for the studio magazine The Great Wall Pictorial, serving as art director on films such as The Peerless Beauty (1953) and contributing to Modern Red Chamber Dream (1952) and Magnolia (1958). A plan for a second feature, Bees and Locusts, was shelved for lack of resources. Returning to Shanghai in 1954, he joined the Shanghai Animation Film Studio and directed Havoc in Heaven (1961 and 1964), China's first colour animated feature, adapted from Journey to the West. After his death in 1997 he was buried in Shanghai's Fushou Cemetery, where his gravestone is decorated with a sculpture of the Monkey King from Havoc in Heaven.
Known with his brother as the Wan Brothers, Wan Laiming pushed forward the technique and storytelling of Chinese-language animation, from Uproar in the Studio and Princess Iron Fan to Havoc in Heaven. In his five years at Great Wall in Hong Kong he brought animation and art design into the production system of the émigré filmmakers, handling sets and costume for many Mandarin pictures and shaping the later course of Chinese-language animation.
Achievements
- 1926 · With his brothers made Uproar in the Studio for Great Wall, the first animated short in China
- 1941 · Completed Princess Iron Fan, the first animated feature in China
- 1961 · Directed Part One of Havoc in Heaven, China's first colour animated feature; Part Two followed in 1964