CHINESE CITY TO BUILD $38 MILLION MUSEUM DEDICATED TO TAIWANESE CARTOONIST

The CBC reports that officials from a city in eastern China have consolidated their plans to build a thirty-eight-million-dollar complex—with museum, artist workshops, and luxury hotels—dedicated to Taiwanese cartoonist Chu Teh-yung. Chu says he’s signed a contract with officials from Hangzhou, which will yield an animation building next to the city’s West Lake. The compound is due to open in 2010. “The museum will be my concept. They agreed not to interfere,” said the forty-nine-year-old artist, who adds that the exhibition spaces will display his cartoons and sculptures and will include whimsical designs such as a toilet shaped like a whale’s mouth.

Chu’s six main comic books, available in China for a decade, have become extremely popular for their humor and sarcasm. They portray family issues—not political ones—such as parental pressure and generational clashes, which have become more marked as China has modernized and a new class of white-collar workers have come to the fore.