Ye Qianyu

Ye Qianyu (or Yeh Ch'ien-yü; 31 March 1907 – 5 May 1995) was a Chinese painter and pioneering manhua artist. In 1928, he cofounded Shanghai Manhua, one of the earliest and most influential manhua magazines, and created Mr. Wang, one of China's most famous comic strips.

Ye was also a master of traditional Chinese painting and served as the head of the Department of Chinese Painting of the China Central Academy of Fine Arts. During the Cultural Revolution he was persecuted and imprisoned for seven years.

Ye was married three times. His first two marriages, to Luo Caiyun and dancer Dai Ailian, ended in divorce. His third marriage, to movie star Wang Renmei, lasted more than 30 years until Wang's death.

Early life Ye Qianyu was born Ye Lunqi in Tonglu county, Zhejiang province in 1907. Although he loved to paint since childhood, he had neither the money nor the opportunity to seek professional training, forcing him to teach himself how to paint.

Career in Shanghai At age 18 Ye moved to Shanghai, where he found work at a small, short-lived journal Sanri Huabao (Three Day Pictorial). The journal shut down when Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition army reached Shanghai in April 1927.

Out of work, Ye Qianyu, then 20 years old, together with fellow cartoonists Huang Wennong and Lu Shaofei released a publication dedicated to manhua, called Shanghai Manhua (or Shanghai Sketch). The first effort looked like a propaganda poster and was a failure. Undeterred, the original three, joined by eight more artists including Zhang Guangyu, Ding Song, and Wang Dunqing, formed the Shanghai Sketch Society (also translated as Shanghai Cartoon Association) in the autumn of 1927.

Under the leadership of Zhang Guangyu, who recruited the wealthy poet Shao Xunmei as a sponsor, Ye drew several covers for the magazine Mr. Wang became one of China's most famous cartoons, eventually being made into 11 films in the 1930s and 40s.

In June 1930 Shanghai Manhua was merged into Modern Miscelleny (or Modern Pictorial, 时代画报), Funded by the Kuomintang government, the corps left Shanghai for the interior to spread anti-Japanese propaganda. In 1954, he was appointed head of the Chinese Painting Department of the academy. He painted prolifically in the 1950s, including such representative works as Indian Dancing, Autumn of the Summer River, and The Liberation of Beiping. After his release in 1975, he was allowed to return to work at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, as a janitor.

In 1935, while he was an editor with the Modern Sketch magazine, Ye fell in love with Liang Baibo, one of the first female Chinese cartoonists and creator of the comic strip Miss Bee. Luo Caiyun rejected Ye's request for divorce, but they agreed to become legally separated.

At the start of the Sino-Japanese War, Liang Baibo joined Ye's Salvation Cartoon Propaganda Corps and went to Wuhan with him. However, Liang met and fell in love with an air force pilot in Wuhan, eventually following him to Taiwan. She suffered from mental illness in her later years and committed suicide circa 1970.

In 1940 Ye Qianyu met the dancer Dai Ailian in Hong Kong. An overseas Chinese born in Trinidad, Dai had come to Hong Kong to support the war effort. Although Dai could not speak Chinese and Ye spoke little English, they fell in love and got married within a few weeks. Soong Ching-ling, the widow of President Sun Yat-sen, presided over their wedding. Because of a botched surgery in Hong Kong, Dai was unable to have children. According to Ye Qianyu's daughter Mingming, who lived with her father and was initially hostile to her stepmother, Dai treated her as if she had been her own child.

In 1950 Ye spent more than half a year in Xinjiang. When he returned to Beijing, Dai Ailian unexpectedly asked for divorce, because she had fallen in love with her dance partner. Ye was devastated; the divorce was finalized in 1951. Dai Ailian lived until 2006, and is now known as the "Mother of Chinese ballet".

Ye's last wife was Wang Renmei, a famous actress who had been previously married to the "Film Emperor" Jin Yan. Introduced by mutual friends, they got married in 1955. The marriage was stormy from the beginning, but it lasted more than 30 years, through the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, until Wang's death in 1987.

Luo Caiyun, Ye Qianyu's first wife, lived with their son Ye Shen in Wuxi, Jiangsu. When Ye Qianyu was accused of being a KMT agent and thrown into prison during the Cultural Revolution, Luo was persecuted for being his ex-wife. She committed suicide in 1970.

Selected works