Dive into Jingyi to see the collision of literature and comics

The last session of Lin Rongsan's literature lecture, Li Ang x Liu Guangcheng, is about storytelling swinging in literature and comics. It mainly revolves around how Liu Guangcheng adapted Li Ang's novel "Beijing Incense Burner" into comics, and discusses literature and comics Possibilities and difficulties of cross-border combinations.

Liu Guangcheng is a talented Hong Kong artist. He immigrated to Japan shortly after he was born in Hong Kong. After spending his childhood in Japan, he went to the mainland with his parents to live briefly, and then returned to Hong Kong to spend his youth and youth. In 2021, he moved to Taiwan to live . Liu Guangcheng studied at the Department of Art of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. After graduation, he created full-time works. He has provided illustrations and comics for many media for a long time. The most widely known are the eye-popping girl created in August 2019 and the collection of paintings "Disappeared Hong Kong" published later. ". Liu Guangcheng likes to use black and white lines to create, and his painting style is repressed with unwilling resistance and mockery of this absurd world. Because of the epidemic, this time the lecture was changed to an online format. I had the cheek to ask for the conference link, and I was abruptly caught in a bunch of names with the student number of Jingyi University, cheering for the pride of our Hong Kong.

Published in 1997, Li Ang's "Beijing Incense Burner Everyone Inserts" tells the story of a woman, Lin Lizi, who used sex to comfort anxious men who suffered setbacks in the opposition movement before the lifting of the law; Completely used as a tool in exchange for political status. Li Ang's book uses sex to connect politics, ridicules the incompetence of men inside and outside the party, and expresses the oppression that a patriarchal society brings to women. The novel ends with Lin Lizi completely abandoning the shackles imposed by religion and men, and shouting, "Why can't women use their own bodies as a strategy to subvert men and win power?"

This time, why choose Liu Guangcheng, who has no knowledge of Taiwan history at all, and has not even read Li Ang's novels, for the comic adaptation? During the lecture, Jingyi revealed that there are three reasons why he chose Liu Guangcheng to hold the brush. First, through an exclusive interview with Liu Guangcheng by The Reporter, he felt that there were similarities between Li Ang and Guangcheng. Their own creations intervene in the resistance to totalitarian rule; secondly, both of them are self-contained mainstream, and I believe that sparks can be generated. I also hope that Liu Guangcheng will re-understand and organize Li Ang's words from a different perspective from Taiwanese and using local elements. , to draw works that are in line with international standards; finally, due to the controversy (Note 1) that occurred in the original work in the early years, Taiwan cartoonists may worry about offending people, while Hong Kong cartoonists will not have this concern.

Li Ang's writing has always been free of taboos. In this cooperation with Liu Guangcheng, Li Ang claimed that there would not be any restrictions, and that it would be acceptable to let the artist adapt it and show the sex scenes at three o'clock. The characters in the comics just wear pants. For Liu Guangcheng, he faced many difficulties in taking over this job, but with his talent, Jingyi University and Li Ang's strong assistance, the comic book was successfully drawn page by page.

The first difficulty is that Liu Guangcheng doesn't know much about Taiwan's history - the living conditions of the opposition parties and the situation in Taiwan before and after the lifting of the martial law. In this regard, Jingyi University lent a lot of political magazines and books from that era to Guangcheng as a reference, allowing him to understand history and giving him a certain sense of picture of that era.

The second is the depiction of sex scenes. There are a lot of explicit sexual descriptions in Li Ang's original work, and sex is mostly from a female perspective. Therefore, Guangcheng believes that he cannot think from the perspective of men, and should try to think and paint from the perspective of women, and at the same time, he should not be limited by the scale of his creation. The heroine's sexuality in the book is actually a projection of her complex state of mind, from sweet love to different sexes full of pain in her heart, to finally sex for power, these are difficult to deal with when converted into pictures, not just dew points It can be solved by imagining various situations by substituting characters, and using different pictures to reflect them as much as possible. In the lecture, several very impactful pictures written by Liu Guangcheng were shared in advance. For example, the first sex between Lin Lizi and her lover in the office, through Lin Lizi's hand grabbing the documents on the table to express the pleasure brought by passion; another example is the picture of Lin Lizi finally gaining power, through her sitting in underwear wearing underwear To perform at the top of a bunch of naked men, as Li Ang wrote in the book "It's not the man who sleeps with me, it's me who sleeps with the man", a strong sense of conquest jumps out of the picture.

The third difficulty is the depiction of religious scenes. Liu Guangcheng does not know much about religions and gods in Taiwan. He is worried that he will not be able to substitute for religious plots, and that he will blaspheme religion because of his zero knowledge. Therefore, at the suggestion of Professor Huang Wencheng of Jingyi University, Li Ang took Guangcheng to visit the temples in Taipei, and introduced the styles and functions of various gods to Guangcheng. Guangcheng also took the opportunity to take many photos of the front and back of the statues for reference. Of course, during the lecture, I was fortunate enough to see the Taiwanese idols written by Guangcheng. The complicated and cumbersome lines successfully penetrated the heavy sense of religion that the book wanted to express.

The fourth difficulty is that the novel has a lot of narration, various gossip from the mouth of the third person, and the timeline of the development of the story is very jumpy. These are all very difficult parts to convert text into comics. Liu Guangcheng changed the narration and gossip into first-person pictures, so that the tense atmosphere or all kinds of right and wrong appear in the same scene with the parties. Regarding the problem of the chaotic timeline, which is difficult to handle in the picture, Liu Guangcheng simplified it by sorting out the timeline.

The fifth is that the proportion of depicting politics and eroticism needs to be very appropriate, otherwise it will become a simple political cartoon or erotic cartoon. Mr. Li Ang expressed his satisfaction with this. He believed that Liu Guangcheng had a good grasp of the overall narrative, and felt that the two were talking through the same story. Thinking of Li Ang's satire on politics in his novel: "If the idea of Taiwan's founding movement could be spread out through her voice, maybe Taiwan's founding would have been successful", "Fuck every day... Pussy... loose again." It collapses again...the penis is in it...the middle is dominant, the middle is dominant, just like the island of Taiwan is more independent than the Taiwan Strait. Wouldn't Taiwan become independent? Wouldn't the founding of the country be successful? It can be seen that the comrades work together and die together, really Can you "benefit the world"!" Thinking of this, I really look forward to seeing how Liu Guangcheng presents Li Ang's vitriol.

Liu Guangcheng still has a few unfinished parts of the whole book, and it is expected to be published in November this year. This comic book is also a project funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Taiwanese Department of Jingyi University. Jingyi has already reported to the Ministry of Culture that the level of the restricted level in the book is in advance, and the Ministry of Culture still expresses its strong support. Liu Guangcheng was able to interpret Li Angchun's eroticism and politics in his paintings without being limited by scale. Of course, this was created by the tolerance brought by Taiwan's slowly moving towards democracy and freedom for so many years. Works, isn't it normal?

By the way, I'm so old, and it seems that I haven't bought a limited-level book with plastic wrapping, but this time I'm finally going to buy it!

"My own person, there is no reason to hold on, wow?"

 Note 1: After the publication of "Beijing Hong Kong Incense Burner, Everyone Inserts", it once sparked a fierce debate between Li Ang and Chen Wenqian, a talented political woman. Chen Wenqian believed that the novel was alluding to her, while Li Ang stated that the novel did not insinuate any specific characters. Among them, right and wrong and controversy, it was a sensation back then.