Wang Wenzhang, the director of ChinaArt Academy, maintains that the marriage between Chinese operas andanimated cartoons does help in saving and developing Chinese operaswhich are on the verge of dying. What’s more, theatrical repertoireswill offer inspiration for cartoon creation.
“As the adolescents can not easilyaccept the traditional Chinese operas, we suggest using the form ofanimated cartoons, which are popular among the young, to show thebeauty of traditional theatrical repertoires. This way, our excellenttraditional culture can be succeeded to the younger generation,” saysLi Jianfeng, a CPPCC member of Hunan province.
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Cartoon “Mending Hollowware” |
The young students are keen toanimation cartoon creation. It’s reported that primary students fromChangsha, Hunan, contributed to the creation of animation cartoon“Mending Hollowware,” the first result of the project. The cartoon wascreated after a homonymous Hunan Flower and Drum Opera repertoire,telling the story of how the young girl Lanying and her lover--ahollowware repairer—persuaded Lanying’s mother to agree with theirmarriage. Altogether 101 primary students from Changsha were involvedin creating the images in this product. The image of Lanying drawn byShao Yidan, a fifth-grade student in Changsha, greatly touched thedesigners and was developed later into the final image in the cartoon“Mending Hollowware.”
The benefits of the project also go toChina’s cartoon industry. Despite the government’s heavy support inrecent years, China’s cartoon industry is still in its infancy and themarket is dominated by Japanese, American and South Korean products.
In 2006, Thru the Moebius Strip, thefirst and most expensive animation movie ever made in China, crashed inthe domestic box office after its public show. The three-dimensionalmovie took 400 artists from eight countries five years to make.Containing too much foreign flavor, this Chinese animation movie wasseverely criticized. Why not turn to the traditional Chinese culturefor inspiration, people asked.
