Mermaid 人鱼 (1982) #

Mermaid 人鱼 (1982), written and drawn by He Yongkun 何永坤 and Li Danwu 李旦武, translated by Damian Mandzunowski, published in Aomi huakan 奥秘画刊 01/1982 (12), pp. 15-18.¹

translation and introduction: 1 March 2026

Translator’s introduction #

Damian Mandzunowski

The story translated below differs to the other lianhuanhua translations featured on this website thus far. For one, it has been published not as a palm-sized booklet but as one of a dozen-or-so short stories featured in a pictorial (huakan 画刊) called Aomi 奥秘 (lit., “profound mystery”). Aomi first appeared in early 1980 as a bi-monthly journal focused on picture stories around themes of fantasy, science fiction, history, and science popularization. In time, its readership grew beyond its hometown of Kunming—where it continues to be published until today—to become one of China’s most widely read pictorial journals of the 1980s and 1990s. (In partial shock to the established lianhuanhua industries in Shanghai, Beijing, and Liaoning, but that is a story to tell another time.)

All these details directly influence both the contents and the style of Mermaid. With its 25 panels on four pages, Mermaid necessarily tells a different kind of story and shows it in a different kind of way than a lianhuanhua would on 120 or 140 panels. Moreover, rather than following the lianhuanhua standard layout of one image per page accompanied by a text underneath, the comic plays with panel and text structure in a way still fairly novel to readers of lianhuanhua up to that point yet typical to the stories Aomi would go on to present. One could even go as far as seek closer resemblance to visual framing as known from American, European, or Japanese comics—conscious influences that the publishers of Aomi were only happy to regularly highlight themselves by the usual choice of foreign artists’ creations (Frank Frazetta was a favorite) as splashy cover page images.

More than anything else, Mermaid is also a vivid example of how the early-Reform Era drive toward mass science popularization (kepu 科普) was realized on a small scale. Setting out in its first eight panels with a short prehistory of the mermaid phenomenon in the form of both legends (approached with a hint of awe) and famous historical fakes (judged more negatively), Mermaid’s actual story begins when, on panel 9, Chinese scientists decide to adopt scientific methods in a pursuit of truth. With its eventual resolution, showcasing not only that the mysterious mermaid was all along nothing but a reallife strange deep-sea mammal known as dugong, but also through the violent struggle to finally capture it, the story presents as obvious the necessity of conquering and subduing nature for scientific progress and discovery. And yet, in all that, the comic retains a certain playfulness, not least in that the cover of the journal’s issue features what at first glance appears to be a typical depiction of the mermaid as a sensual woman-like creature, only for it to reveal, upon a second look, that in fact the woman is a diver observing a dugong in its natural habitat (the cover is also referenced in-text, in panel 23):

Cover of Aomi huakan 01/1982 (12); from the ERC-ChinaComx collection.

Indeed, for such a short and seemingly mundane story, much more could be said about the various meanings and interpretative dimensions of Mermaid. This short comic about the discovery of the “reality” behind mermaids happens to be set in October 1975, concurrently to a large nationwide mass-reading campaign of Lenin’s Theories of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat; the first discovery of a dugong by the teenagers in Guangxi is said to have been in 1958, locating it just after the Hundred Flowers would turn into the Anti-Rightist Campaign. Both dates are mentioned only in passing, and the historical contexts are left out, effectively rendering any interpretations along these lines close to overreading However, one is left to wonder; especially given the early-1980s popularity of scar literature and other critical explorations of China’s recent past. What is less ambivalent is how Mermaid puts centerstage the rapidly growing interest in, and self-awareness of, the outside world. Despite the historical setting, this is a story that declares: China is willing and ready to contribute to international scientific development, even while it proudly highlights that it was Chinese scientists who managed to solve a mystery that evaded everyone else.

In the end, the story both celebrates patriotic science and extends an invitation to venture beyond one’s comfort zone, far into the vast ocean—figuratively, or perhaps literally?

Notes on the translation #

The text adopts a slightly incoherent use of gender pronouns. The ocean, in panel 1, is an “it” 它 but at the end becomes a “she” 她. The mermaid of the legends (in panels 2, 3, 4) is a “she” 她, the faked specimen in panel 7 is an “it” 它, and once uncovered as an animal in panel 23, it is continues to be referred to as an “it” 它. However, even though the measure word used in panel 10, yi tiao 一条, suggests early on that the eventually captured mermaid will end up being an “it” 它 as it is usually used when counting thin objects but also fish, throughout panels 11-22 no pronouns appear. The translation thus makes an effort to retain the ambiguity until it’s final reveal on panel 23.

Panels 4-5 retell a version of the legend of the Mermaid of Warsaw, Poland, and a literal transliteration of both the name of the hero, Wars, and the city, Warsaw, would render them respectively as “Hua’ernuosha” and “Huasha.” While the key aspect of how Warsaw was named after Wars would also be retained through the repetition of “Hua” in both names, the translation uses English for an easier reading experience.

Similarly, the last words on panel 24 say: “…叫做“儒艮（音更）”,” and a literal translation would be: “…called “rugen” (where ‘gen’ is pronounced ‘geng’ ).” For an easier reading experience, the translation simply says: “…called dugong.”

Read the translated lianhuanhua #

Page 01 / Panels 01-06

Page 02 / Panels 07-12

Page 03 / Panels 13-19

Page 04 / Panels 20-25