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Stereotypical "Confucian" Wisdom
The comic panel Ching Chow was launched in 1927 by Sidney Smith and Stanley Link, running for sixty years under numerous creators. After Smith died in 1935, the comic was solely credited to Link. The present scrapbook contains clippings from the Stanley Link era of the comic. The single-panel comic was syndicated through the Chicago Tribune - New York Daily News Syndicate.
The final page of the scrapbook is a September 17, 1942, newsletter for the Redeemer Church, with various news items, including an announcement that the Church had paid off its mortgage and would thereafter establish a "Coal Fund." As the letter was issued shortly after Pearl Harbor and just before winter, the fund was likely meant to ensure that needy families in the congregation and the broader community could afford coal to heat their homes during the winter. With many men serving in the military and economic resources stretched thin, the church would have sought to alleviate the burden on families struggling to keep warm.
The communal sensitivity of the newsletter, juxtaposed against the accumulation of insensitive racial stereotyping graphics, makes for an interesting ephemeral snapshot at the outset of World War II.
Chinese Stereotypes
Like the character of Charlie Chan, Ching Chow has been criticized as reinforcing condescending Asian stereotypes. Yet as an item of popular culture, the Ching Chow comic shines light on the concerns of the time. As a purveyor of pseudo-Confucianism to the American public (one writer described the comic panel as not "as much a strip as it was a daily fortune cookie"), this comic clearly touched the lives of some people in a significant way.
Sample pearls of wisdom from Ching Chow:
- It is written on jade - wisdom rides upon the ruins of folly.
- Who can deny - a man may die old at thirty or young at eighty.
- Wind and fortune are not lasting
- It is heard from the voice of all great men - to endure injuries with a brave mind is one half the conquest.
- Wealth does not always improve us - a man, as he gets to be worth more - may become worth-less.
- Most of the shadows that cross our pathway through life are caused by our standing in our own way.
- It is truly said - in diving for pleasures we bring up more gravel than pearls.
Stanley J. Link was an influential American newspaper cartoonist.
Link's career began in earnest when, as a teenager, he pursued a correspondence course in cartooning. At sixteen, Link secured his first professional position with a Chicago-based animated cartoon company. During the early 1920s, he honed his skills as a freelancer before becoming an assistant to Sidney Smith on The Gumps, a popular comic strip. Link notably ghosted the Sunday pages of The Gumps starting in 1926, establishing his reputation in the industry.
In 1927, Stanley Link and Sidney Smith co-created Ching Chow, a daily gag cartoon that featured a stereotypical Chinese man who imparted daily aphorisms and wise sayings. The comic strip debuted on January 10, 1927, and quickly gained popularity for its pithy humor. After Smith's death in 1935, Link continued to draw Ching Chow until his own death in 1957. The series, despite its racial insensitivity by modern standards, was a mainstay in the News-Tribune group's publications for fifty years. Will Henry, Link's assistant, carried on the strip until 1971, after which it saw several revivals before its final discontinuation in 1990.
On July 23, 1933, Stanley Link launched his own comic strip, Tiny Tim. This Sunday comic revolved around the adventures of Tim and Dotty Grunt, two siblings who were only two inches tall and were adopted by a farmer and his wife. The strip ran successfully until March 2, 1958, drawing on the long-standing appeal of tales about tiny people, a genre popularized by earlier works like Palmer Cox's The Brownies and William Donahey's Teenie Weenies. Tiny Tim also inspired several comic book stories published by Western Publishing in the mid-1930s through the 1940s.
Throughout his career, Link created several companion strips, known as "toppers," for his main features. A Ching Chow companion strip to Tiny Tim ran from October 31, 1943, into the 1950s. Other toppers included Dennis the Menace (no relation to the later famous creations by Hank Ketcham or David Law), Dill and Daffy (1935-1943), and Snap Shot Sam (1931-1934). These additional strips often provided lighter, humorous interludes to complement the main comic narratives.
In addition to his other works, Stanley Link created The Dailys, a gag-a-day family comic strip that ran from January 5, 1948, until September 14, 1957. This strip showcased Link's ability to capture the humorous aspects of everyday family life, further cementing his legacy as a versatile and enduring cartoonist.
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