Comic relief

Cartoon campaign

Zhao's comics have been submitted to a campaign Beijing initiated in early February that calls for artistic creations to convey information and a positive spirit in the nation's fight against the novel coronavirus.

The campaign is jointly hosted by several organizations, including Beijing's culture and tourism bureau, and the Beijing Animation and Game Industry Alliance.

Organizers have received more than 7,000 artworks from around China and more than 500 pieces from 40 countries and regions, says Liu Chungang, a representative of the alliance.

"Zhao's works are very good and novel, and a combination of ancient Chinese relics and the (current) age," Liu says.

Liu says campaign organizers plan to develop them into an animation.

Zhao says it wasn't difficult to select artifacts as motifs.

"Most of my works use well-known relics, so the public is more likely to identify with them," he says.

Zhao has been interested in archaeology since childhood.

"I was drawn to photos of intricate ancient items in the books my dad brought back," Zhao says.

His father used to work at Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum, which hosts the Terracotta Warriors.

"Relics were beautiful and mysterious. The more I was exposed to them, the more they became a part of my life," he says.

Zhao began to sketch them in primary school.

The more he drew, the closer he felt with the artifacts on the brochures and documents from his father.

He came to love them even more when they appeared in his schoolbooks.

"I wanted to see them in person," he recalls.

Zhao took that desire to the extreme. After he was discharged from the military in 1995, he took a job at the same museum where his father had worked.