Long’s Stilts

Original Title
龙的高跷

Author
Li Yan

Illustrator
Yu Dawu

Pages
56pp

Publisher
Poplar | 21st Century Publishing House
2020

Walking on stilts is a quite common and well-liked game in northern China, including Beijing, especially on the Lantern Festival, the 15th day of the first month of the lunar year. On that day, everyone can be like a skywalker.

Long loves the game, too, as many of his peers, so they finally took their courage, and put on their own stilts.

A resect of Chinese folk art and handicrafts, a view of the culture behind them.

the latest title of one UNESCO awarded, born-in-Beijing illustrator

Li Yan, born in Yanqing, Beijing in 1983, has been immersed in the unique intangible cultural heritage of her hometown since a child. After working in the picture book industry for many years, she came up with the idea of combining traditional folk treasures with modern picture book art, hoping to contribute to the promotion of national culture. Long’s Stilts is her picture book debut.

Yu Dawu, born in Beijing in 1948, grew up in a hutong inside Andingmen. Passionate about art, he studied painting at the Children’s Palace behind Jingshan when he was a child, and began publishing works in 1972. He was engaged in the editing of picture albums and children’s books at the People’s Art Publishing House, and created many comic books and children’s book illustrations during the same period. He is good at using gongbi painting techniques to depict classical literary genres and express the beauty of traditional Chinese painting. In 1988, Prince Nezha’s Triumph Against Dragon King won the Grand Prize of the 6th Noma International Picture Book Original Painting Competition of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Center for Asia, and was published by Kodansha in Japan in 1990. His other children’s picture book works include Beijing City Is Planned With the Forbidden City and Beijing’s Spring Festival.