Tracing the roots of illustration books in China

Children's illustration books first appeared in the 1600s in Europe. Their passage to China, however, took much longer, roughly 300 years.

In China, children's illustration books have a history of just 100 years and their development can be divided into four stages.

From early 1900s to mid 1900s, a large number of books and magazines with illustrations appeared with the fast development of the modern publishing industry. The illustration arts at that time were a mixed genre of Chinese traditional paintings and the western style, and most of the stories originate from the fundamental changes that China experienced after the collapse of Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the warlord struggles and the war against the Japanese invasion.