Sapajou was the greatest cartoonist of the China Coast's heyday in the first half of the 20th century. A brilliant and acerbic political cartoonist, he also had a rare gift for capturing the character and feel of Chinese people, Shanghai street scenes and the chaos of China in the 1920s and 1930s.


In this, the first of three volumes, we witness the early years of Sapajou's prolific career from 1923-1931. Warlords vie for control of the Republic while in Shanghai opportunistic politicians, radical student protesters and bloodthirsty gangsters fight for control of the streets. Jazz and kidnappings, heatwaves and typhoons, Sapajou's brush documented the golden years of the Pearl of the Orient.

Who is Sapajou?
Sapajou, the nom de plume of Georgii Avksentievich Sapojnikoff,
was the best loved cartoonist of the old Shanghai. Born in Russia before the 1917 revolution, he served as a lieutenant in the Imperial Russian Army, was wounded and then studied drawing at the Moscow Academy of Arts. A refugee from the Bolshevik revolution, he arrived in Shanghai in 1920. He was a regular political cartoonist for the North-China Daily News and the North China Herald, and was featured as an illustrator in several popular books. After the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in late 1941, he later worked for the German-backed fascist publication XX Century and his reputation never recovered after the war. He died of lung cancer in Manila, Philippines, in 1949 and was survived by a wife and two children.