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Ange Zhang was born in Beijing in 1953. He worked as a stage designer for the National Opera in Beijing before he started to create animated films and focused on illustration. Red country, yellow river is the first book drawn and written by him
Ange Zhang’s school days end with the Cultural Revolution. He is forced to work and live on a farm in a faraway village and in 1971 he is transferred to a forced-labor camp, where an artist teaches him drawing lessons undercover. In 1977 he studied set design and drawing and later he worked as a stage designer for the National Opera in Beijing.
In 1989 he migrated to Canada, where he has been working in different theaters. Since 1994, he has focused on illustrating books and animated cartoons.
In 1966, Mao Zedong starts the Cultural Revolution in China, the big uprising of the young people against everything which seemed to be old, intellectual or occidental. By then, Ante Zhang is 13 years old and feels attracted and repelled at the same time. He yearns for joining his generation fellows, but his father, a famous poet, will be humiliated and sent to prison.
Why should writing poems and reading book be a crime? Are not people supposed to rule their own lives? Ange dreams of being an artist. Nowadays, he is, and he narrates his young years, under Maoist dictatorship, in this book.
Bologna Ragazzi Prize.
“Ange has achieved something bit: to settle accounts in a soft way, like in a parable, with the abused committed on a whole generation.” (Der Spiegel).
"A succesful example of subjective interpretation of History, from a teenager’s point of view.” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung)
“You read it like if you were reading an exciting story about the darkest time of modern History.” (Süddeustsche Zeitung).
