Wan Laiming (万籁鸣) was the man who breathed life into the Monkey King, bringing Chinese animation to its heights in the 1960s and putting it at an international level for its time.
Born in Nanjing in 1900, Laiming had three brothers, all of whom would work together on his later seminal work, possibly largely thanks to their mother, who encouraged in her boys an interest in the arts, especially puppetry. Yet, it was with Wan Guchan that Laiming would kick start the Chinese animation industry, working together at the time in the fine art departments at Shanghai Commercial Press.
Perhaps China’s earliest film studio was operated by The Press, their in 1917 having managed to obtain equipment owned by a bankrupt American entrepreneur.
Absconded to working in an attic, the two brothers independently created a flip-book animation of a cat catching a mouse with no prior knowledge of the technique that had been around for a while in western countries. It was there and then that the two would also day after day experiment with zoetrope animation.
Laiming had his own version of the Chinese Dream, wanting to pull stories from Chinese folk tales and employ traditional art and music in animation. In 1940, despite numerous budget cuts, China’s first feature-length animation was complete. Like its sequel to be, “Princess Iron Fan” was based on an episode from one of China’s great pieces of literature,“Journey to the West”.
A major success, the movie was shown even in Japan during the war, where it served to inspire Tezuka Osamu in his creation of the 1960s Japanese manga series “Astro Boy”.
Princess Iron Fan was also to lay the groundwork for the pinnacle of Chinese animation that was to be Laiming’s legacy, “Havoc in Heaven” (大闹天宫), also translated as “Uproar in Heaven” (1961-65), released in two parts and co-directed with Tang Cheng, and the other three Wan brothers serving as producers. The four are today recognised as the pioneers of the animation film industry in China.
With its genesis in Princess Iron Fan, Havoc in Heaven had been in the works for more than 10 years, its production curtailed by the outbreak of war. The two parts of the film were completed in 1961 and 1964, and had their first screening together the following year.
Relating the misadventures and misfortunes of the mischievous Monkey King, Havoc in Heaven went on to be a huge international success, with audiences and critics alike. In 1978, the movie won the outstanding film award at the International London Film Festival, and went on to be broadcast by the BBC in 1980, 1981 and 1983.
Elsewhere, the animation won a Special Interest award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic, and was broadcast on Swedish, Danish and Russian television, also in the 1980s.
That Laiming found much of his early inspiration in Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” earned him the reputation as the Walt Disney of China, a sign of the high regard in which this particular Great Nanjinger is held. Laiming passed away on 7 October, 1997, in Shanghai.
