Renowned Hong Kong political cartoonist and artist Yim Yee-king, also known by his pen name “Ah Chung,” died over the weekend. He was 85.
Yim — known for his simple watercolor and ink illustrations, which were often accompanied by touching messages — passed away surrounded by family at his home in New York, according to a post by his agent on Facebook.
“Ah Chung passed away because of heart failure on August 11th in the early morning,” the post by his family reads.
“His wife, daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren were with him when he was gone.”
Born in Guangzhou in 1933, Yim moved to Hong Kong when he was young. A self-taught painter, he began as a full-time artist in 1952.
He held his first exhibition in 1956 and would go on to showcase his works in more than 30 exhibitions in Hong Kong, the United States, Taiwan, and mainland China during his career, according to an online biography.
In his early years, he became well known for political cartoons and, in 1967, was invited to design a cover for a book satirizing Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, according to the SCMP.
According to the newspaper, which interviewed the artist in 2014, Yim grew disillusioned with his work as a political cartoonist and, in the 1980s, moved to Los Angeles, where he opened a picture-framing gallery with an English-speaking Chinese friend.
He began painting under the name Ah Chung, creating a Zen-like style of freestyle watercolor and ink illustrations, accompanied by calligraphic lines about nature, life, family, and living in peace.
“So-called politics, in fact, are man-made problems,” he told an interviewer from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “The world keeps changing. It’s difficult to judge which is right and which is wrong.”
In that interview, published almost two decades ago, he discussed his outlook as pursuing “harmony between one and other, harmony in the universe as a whole.”
The piece discussed the first work he painted in Los Angeles, which featured an old man sitting down, wearing a sad face.
“I don’t speak, not because I have no mouth, but because I don’t want to say anything,” the caption read.
Yim also discussed his calm approach to death. “Death is a natural part of life… I do want everything to be long-lasting, but I know that’s impossible. So I prefer to face it positively. That’s natural.”
