Baozou Manhua

Submission 16,193

Part of a series on Rage Comics. [View Related Entries]

About

Baozou Manhua (translation: rage comics) refers to a website that hosts Chinese, black and white, crudely drawn webcomics. Much like English-langauge rage comics, Baozou Manhua tell of the frustrating experiences of everyday life, generally ending in a darkly humorous punchline.

History

In 2008, Wang Nima founded Baozou Manhua, a website dedicated to Chinese versions of rage comics.^[1] According a 2012 interview^[2] with Wang, he said:

"I think the essence of [rage comics] is in helping people express their discontent towards some things -- it exaggerates. I intend to give the masses a 'spear', so they can say hi to creativity."

Fandom

On June 25th, 2012, Redditor ^[6] thislifee launched the /r/baozoumanhua subreddit. Two months later, on August 15th, 2012, Baozou Manhua's Weibo,^[4] the Chinese social media site, launched. As of August 2 more than 9 million fans (screenshot below).

Impact

Baozou Manhua has also been used for government outreach. On January 9th, 2013, the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau^[5] posted a series of rage comics to deliver a public service message (shown below, right) On August 1st, 2016, a Chinese fire department^[3] began using Baozou Manhua-style cartoons (shown below, left).