Veteran artist releases bilingual comic book in Shanghai

A bilingual comic book by Zheng Xinyao was released in Shanghai this month.

Zheng is a veteran artist who has had his comics column on the Shanghai-based tabloid Xinmin Evening News for the past 30 years.

The new bilingual edition Comic Sense - Snacks for Thought, in both Chinese and English, is a palm book - no more than 10 centimeters long and 8 centimeters wide. Zheng selected 863 comic drawings from his 1,600 published works, hoping readers would enjoy the book "the way they flipped through the pages of picture books in childhood", according to the artist.

The book comes with voice clippings recorded by the artist himself, in mandarin and the Shanghai dialect. In the voice recordings, Zheng shares five stories about his life-long passion for comics.

According to the publisher, Shanghai Lexicological Publishing House, another new book by Zheng will be published later this year, featuring his drawings of urban architecture in Shanghai and the changing landscapes of the city.