From a Slip in the Rain to a Fissure in Time: Interpreting Childhood, Discipline, and Social History in “Yingzi's Late Journey”

Abstract

This paper presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the four-panel comic strip “Yingzi's Late Journey,” treating it as a culturally rich text. By situating the comic within its literary source, Lin Hai-yin's “My Memories of Old Beijing,” the socio-historical context of Republican-era Beijing, and the artistic tradition of modern Chinese comics, this study argues that the comic is not a simple illustration of its source text but a critical visual re-reading. Through the methodologies of visual narratology and social history, this paper deconstructs themes of patriarchal discipline, class stratification, and the complexities of childhood memory. It contends that the comic, through its medium-specific “panels” and “gutters,” transforms the nostalgic and melancholic emotional rhythm of Lin Hai-yin's prose into a micro-political theater of discipline and repair. It not only amplifies the inherent tensions between nostalgia and trauma, innocence and social cognition, but also, by juxtaposing domestic violence with the structural violence of the urban underclass, reveals the hidden resonance between personal memory and macro-history.