Wang Toon

Wang Toon (born Wáng Zhōnghé, April 14, 1942), sometimes credited as Wang Tong, is a Taiwanese filmmaker. He started his career as an art director and production designer and later became a film director and educator.

Wang began his career in 1966 working at the Central Motion Picture Corporation in the art and costume design department. He won a Golden Horse Award for Best Art Direction for Forever My Love (, 1976), directed by .

In 1981, Wang directed his first feature film, If I Were for Real. It won four Golden Horse Awards, including Best Narrative Feature, Best Leading Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay at the 18th Golden Horse Awards that year.

Between 1981 and 2015, Wang directed 13 feature films, two animated feature films, and one documentary. For his achievements and decades-long contribution to Taiwanese cinema, he was presented the Golden Horse Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.

A devout educator, Wang took a teaching position in the Department of Filmmaking at the Taipei National University of the Arts in 2007. He served as the chair from 2010 to 2013, and then from 2017 to 2019. He retired from the university in 2019 and was awarded the Art Education Contribution Award (藝術教育貢獻獎) by the Ministry of Education in 2022.

Life and career Wang Tong was born Wang Zhonghe in Anhui in 1942. He moved to Taiwan with his family in 1949 due to the Chinese Civil War. Wang studied at the National Taiwan Academy of Arts (國立藝術專科學校) from 1962 to 1965, under the guidance of teachers such as Long Sihliang (龍思良), and Wu Yaozong (吳耀宗). When he was young, Wang was nourished by inspiring journals, such as Juchang (劇場; Theatre Magazine) and Wenxue jikan (文學季刊; Literature Magazine), and his association with contemporary poets and painters, including Chen Yingzhen and Wei Tiancong (尉天聰), and Huang Chunming (黃春明) at Cafe Astoria (明星咖啡館). It was there that Wang Tong read the manuscript of the novel Days of Watching the Sea (看海的日子) by Huang Chun-ming, which he later adapted into a popular feature film A Flower in The Raining Night (1983).

Wang received his first opportunity in 1963 after joining Yuan Qiufeng 's production of Songfest (1963) as an art assistant. Realizing that he was good at art design, and that he could earn more than his classmates who were working as art teachers, Wang decided to stay working in the film industry.