30-Second Overview: In 2009, Wei Tsung-cheng became a professional manga artist with his political satire Emperor Ma Descends. His 2010 serialized work, Ming Zhan Lu (Record of the Netherworld), placed post-921 earthquake Taiwan, the streets of Ximending, Taoist sects, and Mazu (Lin Moniang) into a shonen adventure. While often viewed as a success of “local elements,” Wei’s own description is more grounded: he drew markets, buses, and the worries of school life. Taiwan was not a label pasted on, but something that grew organically from daily life.
Image caption: This image depicts the Mazu statue on Meizhou Island, Putian, Fujian. It is used solely for illustrative purposes regarding the context of folk religion and is not a work by Wei Tsung-cheng nor the 2017 Lin Moniang lantern. The image author is Jet.Xu, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. See the Wikimedia Commons file page for details.
On February 2, 2017, the Lin Moniang lantern made its debut at the Taipei Lantern Festival. This was not the middle-aged Mazu commonly seen in temples, but the youthful image from Wei Tsung-cheng’s Ming Zhan Lu. The lantern stood 8 meters high and 5 meters wide, with the entire train structure measuring 10 meters in length, prepared for the West City Carnival parade. 1
Just a few years prior, this character existed only within comic panels. By New Year’s Day 2021, the Ming Hua Yuan troupe adapted Ming Zhan Lu into an electronic rock gezaixi (opera), and Wei Tsung-cheng was called on stage to play “Seventh Uncle.” He later recalled that he initially thought it was just a cameo, only to discover at the press conference that his role was substantial. 2
The starting point of this journey was not a major cultural policy, but a political parody manga born in the doujinshi circle that left publishers unsure whether to accept it. What makes Wei Tsung-cheng truly unique is not just his courage to place political figures, the adult industry, and folk deities in the same creative universe, but his constant questioning: How does a punchline, a deity, or a street become a place that feels like where Taiwanese people actually live?
He Didn’t Draw “Taiwaneseness” First; He Drew What He Saw
Wei Tsung-cheng grew up in Sanxia, New Taipei. The story of Ming Zhan Lu begins in Ximending but extends to Sanxia, the Dabao Stream, and other landscapes he knows well. For readers, these places are background. For the author, they are more like part of the characters: Yokai and Taoist priests do not fight in nameless cities, but in intersections, business districts, and mountain streams recognizable to Taiwanese people. 3
He stated that the concept for Ming Zhan Lu took shape in middle school. Watching Japanese manga depict gods and monsters, he thought, “If Japan can draw its legends like that, then the yokai and folk legends I know around me should be drawable too.” 3
This statement is easily rewritten as “he has local consciousness.” But that phrasing misses a key layer: Wei’s description is not of a plan to first decide to represent Taiwan and then collect symbols. He said he mostly drew things he had experienced, including what he saw in the vegetable market, what he saw on the bus, and what he worried about during school. 3
📝 Curator’s Note
The common narrative is “a local manga artist puts Taiwanese culture into his work.” Wei Tsung-cheng’s creative order reverses this causality: he did not first treat temples, yokai, and place names as cultural symbols and then color the story. Instead, he drew his own life into it. “Taiwaneseness” may not be a checklist of materials, but an unavoidable way of seeing for the author.
Thus, the locality of Ming Zhan Lu appears not only in character names. It appears in the direction of street scenes, the posture of characters walking, the absurdity of placing Taoist priests alongside police, and in details like deities drinking beverages and eating meat buns, which pull the divine back into the mundane. A 2011 Taipei Times report noted that Wei Tsung-cheng made Mazu the central character of Ming Zhan Lu, portraying her as a cute young girl who eats meat buns and drinks honey lemon. 4
This entry point connects with three background articles on this site. Readers first understand Wei Tsung-cheng through the publishing and media context of Taiwanese manga, then understand the position of Mazu’s faith through Taiwan’s religious and temple culture, and finally contrast how Ming Zhan Lu enters traditional performing arts via the gezaixi article. These three nodes are not a list of works, but different sides of the same question: How does a character change meaning between manga, faith, and the stage?
Starting with Emperor Ma Descends: Jokes as a Method of Observation
Emperor Ma Descends in 2009 moved Wei Tsung-cheng from doujinshi creation to professional manga. An Openbook interview described it as a political satire work and listed his later publications: AV Duan Zhi (AV Finger Guide), Jump! Datong Meng Club, My Chairman Is Not That Cute, and Ba Hai Huang Ying (Empire of the Sea Heroes). 5
The success of Emperor Ma Descends had a specific number: 4,000 copies sold in one day at a doujinshi event, with final sales reaching 40,000. This result made Wei Tsung-cheng a full-time manga artist and led Future Digital, which originally distributed Japanese adult games, to begin operating Taiwanese original manga. 6
But he does not understand political manga as statement posters. When discussing how to handle political satire, he said one must maintain observation, allowing both sides’ discourses to appear simultaneously, otherwise the work becomes too extreme. He also said that political figures merely make entertainment stronger; if the satire still holds years later after removing the figures, it is a success. 5
This method makes his manga look chaotic, but the skeleton is precise. Punchlines do not flatten reality; they first allow readers to recognize a reasonable scene, then place something that shouldn’t appear but perfectly reflects power relations within that scene. In interviews, Wei Tsung-cheng described his works as “comedies wrapped in tragedies of power struggles.” 5
From Doujinshi to Sustainable Commercial Manga
Wei Tsung-cheng’s career can be understood through several turning points. These are not merely a chronology of fame, but a microcosm of how Taiwanese manga moves between reader communities, publishers, and public cultural activities.
| Time | Turning Point | Significance for Creation |
|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Emperor Ma Descends sparks discussion at doujinshi events | Political satire becomes an entry to professional manga, proving doujinshi readers can form publishing demand. 5 6 |
| 2010 onward | Ming Zhan Lu begins serialization | Establishes a long-form worldview using Taiwanese landscapes, folk faith, and shonen adventure. 5 |
| 2017 | Lin Moniang becomes the protagonist of the Taipei Lantern Festival lantern | The character moves from print manga to city festivals and public viewing. 1 7 |
| 2021 | Ming Hua Yuan releases gezaixi adaptation | The manga’s worldview is retranslated into the body, music, and stage language of gezaixi. 2 7 |
This timeline also shows that Wei Tsung-cheng’s importance lies not just in sales. When a work allows publishers to see the market for original manga, allows characters to be adopted by public activities, and then allows traditional troupes to rewrite it into stage works, the author is not just delivering a book, but testing whether a Taiwanese narrative can bear the weight of different media.
His collaboration with Future Digital is particularly key. Openbook’s report records that Future Digital, originally focused on distributing Japanese adult games, began operating Taiwanese original manga due to the market response to Emperor Ma Descends. 6 This detail reminds readers that the so-called Taiwanese manga industry is not a straight line planned by large institutions. It often starts with a publisher willing to try once more, or an author willing to rearrange political figures familiar to readers.
Ming Zhan Lu then turned this accident into long-term work. Long-form requires fixed output, editorial judgment, printing, and promotion, and also requires readers to keep returning after the first volume. Lin Moniang’s recognizability was important, but what truly anchored the worldview was the ability of landscapes, faith, and character relationships to continuously generate new stories. This is why Wei Tsung-cheng, when discussing creation, always returns to life observation rather than just character design.
Ming Zhan Lu: Placing Deities into a Livable Network of Relationships
Ming Zhan Lu began serialization in 2010. The story is set after the 921 earthquake, where supernatural phenomena increased across Taiwan, leading the police to establish the “Black Sun Project,” where Taoist priests and police jointly handle incidents. The work does not treat folk faith as a mysterious filter, but makes humans, gods, ghosts, and yokai have relationships with each other. 2
Wei Tsung-cheng initially imagined a group of热血 (hot-blooded) shonen adventures. Editor Han Jing-yue suggested adding Lin Moniang, which made Mazu an important character in the story. Openbook’s table talk records that Han Jing-yue believed the origin of manga is character; Lin Moniang first attracted readers, and through creation, accumulated recognition. 6
Thus, Mazu no longer appears only in shrines, processions, or legends. In the manga, she is a 16-year-old girl, Lin Moniang, with tension between cuteness, childishness, and divinity. A 2023 study published in Asian Ethnology placed this image within the changes of Taiwanese folk religion and popular culture, noting that the first volume published in 2010 brought Mazu into the manga world as a young girl, and she later entered larger public spaces in the 2017 Taipei Lantern Festival and the 2021 gezaixi. 7
What is most noteworthy here is not the familiar slogan of “tradition meets modernity,” but how, after media change, the relationship between deities and readers also changes. Researchers point out that Lin Moniang moved from a character in male-oriented manga subculture to lanterns, theaters, and public activities, simultaneously triggering different interpretations of generation, religion, and political identity. 7
📝 Curator’s Note
The most adventurous aspect of Ming Zhan Lu is not making Mazu cute, but making her long-term companionship possible for readers. The deity moves from the center of a one-time ritual to a character who gets hurt, makes choices, and builds relationships with others in the story. This does not lighten faith; it places faith into the narrative grammar young readers actually use.
“No Absolutes” Creates Space for Creation
When discussing Taoist materials, Wei Tsung-cheng did not present Taiwanese folk faith as a neat body of knowledge. He said Taiwan’s Taoist sects are complex; when asked about different sects, each might tell different stories, and sometimes they do not even acknowledge each other. 3
This lack of neatness did not stop his pen; it became space for creation. When no single recognized version exists, he can first handle the move rules and story structure in the manga, then let different legends collide. But this freedom is not arbitrary. Regarding the depiction of Lin Moniang, he and the editor have an unspoken boundary, knowing which adaptations would push the character to inappropriate positions. 3
He also retains a small but weighty habit: after each publication, he first takes the book to a Mazu temple to pray. He said this is not fear, but a habit and courtesy. 3
This act places “creative freedom” and “cultural responsibility” on the same table. Creators can rearrange myths, but cannot pretend they do not care who believed the myth originally or how it was used. Creation is not borrowing deities as decoration and then tearing up the IOU after the work is finished.
When Manga Leaves the Paper, the Author Is Pulled onto the Stage
In December 2020, the Central Broadcasting System reported that Ming Hua Yuan would adapt Ming Zhan Lu into an electronic rock gezaixi, with performances scheduled for January 2 and 3, 2021, at the Taiwan Center for the Performing Arts. Wei Tsung-cheng was surprised when he first heard of Ming Hua Yuan’s invitation, originally thinking it was just a one-minute appearance, only to later learn he had to play Seventh Uncle. 2
In an OPENTIX interview, he described this performance more directly: “I was coerced.” He originally thought it was a small cameo, only to learn at the press conference that the role was heavy, forcing him to “bite the bullet” and go on stage. 3
Print manga can control readers’视线 (gaze) through panels, but the stage requires actors to send the character’s aura to the audience simultaneously. Wei Tsung-cheng observed that Lin Moniang’s detailed and stable divine charm in the manga is not easily presented on stage; instead, the male protagonist Chen Bo-jung’s large movements come alive more easily. 3
This is the true difficulty of cross-media adaptation: it is not just making the character’s clothes; it is finding a new set of methods for the character to breathe in the new medium. Wei Tsung-cheng’s principle for adapters is: “Adapters can create freely, as long as it is within the same worldview. As long as every creator can tell this story well themselves, I will not have too many opinions.” 3
A Long-Form Work Relies Not on Inspiration, but on Waiting
Ming Zhan Lu reached long-form status not just because Lin Moniang was recognizable. Openbook’s report records that after serialization began in 2010, the first volume sold 14,000 copies, and the 2017 Taipei Lantern Festival’s Lin Moniang main lantern allowed this character to step out of the Taiwanese manga echo chamber. 6
Wei Tsung-cheng also pointed out the fragility of long-form manga: many want to draw long series, but works may be cut short due to subsequent marketing, exposure planning, or publishing conditions. Not everyone can finish it. 3
After having children, his past daily 12-hour drawing life was disrupted; he could only work while children slept. When asked when the work would end, he did not give a date, only smiling and saying, “I’ve drawn it for so long, it should end soon.” 3
This sentence sounds like a joke, but hits the reality of long-form manga. The work must keep moving forward, but the author’s life does not stop on the day creation began. Family, publishing, marketing, reader expectations—all are pulling on the same serialization line.
Why This Character Is Worth Remembering
Placing Wei Tsung-cheng in the history of Taiwanese manga cannot be dismissed with just the words “local” or “adult-oriented.” Both are true, but they end the question too quickly. Political parody gave him his first batch of readers; adult jokes gave him an unrestrained tone. What truly supports the long-form work is that he places different layers of Taiwanese experience in the same story: dialogues in the market, observations on the bus, rituals in local temples, political figures constantly变形 (morphing) in the news, and readers’ feelings of familiarity and strangeness toward deities.
This writing style has an obvious risk. When deities are drawn as young girls, readers may only see the character’s cuteness and forget the faith context behind her. When political figures are drawn as jokes, readers may only leave with their stance and ignore how the joke rearranges power relations. Wei Tsung-cheng’s works do not provide standard answers to these problems. They are more like an open testing ground, allowing readers to decide, after laughing, what they accept, what they question, and which cultural symbols cannot be treated merely as decoration.
Academic research tracking Lin Moniang’s image exactly supplements what manga criticism often ignores. When the character enters lantern festivals and gezaixi, she no longer belongs only to the author and manga readers. Local governments, troupes, religious believers, anime fans, and general audiences may all reinterpret her with their own experiences. 7 These different interpretations do not need to be eliminated, because whether a character survives often depends on whether she can continue to generate questions in new usage contexts.
For engineers or knowledge base readers, Wei Tsung-cheng’s case also provides a practical observation angle: cultural content is not randomly拼接 (splicing) elements from a database, but establishing a set of rules readers can repeatedly recognize. Place names, characters, faith, punchlines, and media adaptations must have traceable relationships between them. When the work moves from manga to lanterns, gezaixi, or research subjects, the worldview only retains its shape if it does not lose form due to the change in carrier. This is the true reason why character stories are worth leaving behind.
From “Looking Like It” to “Making Sense”
Wei Tsung-cheng repeatedly discussed visual details in interviews. How gangsters under the arcade should stand, why the pork cutlet in the bento gets smaller as the character buys it back, what kind of Taiwanese radio broadcasts factory workers love—these are not background data used to decorate scenes. They determine whether readers can believe, before a punchline appears, that people actually lived in that world. 5
This observation also explains why he could connect seemingly unrelated frameworks. Political figures placed into港漫 (Hong Kong manga)-style martial arts, Republic of China history placed into talent shows, deities and police placed into the same case process. The more familiar the framework, the easier the deviation is to see. The power of the joke does not come from strangeness, but from readers knowing how it originally worked, only to suddenly see it pushed aside by Wei Tsung-cheng. 5
The CCC Creative Collection official special issue placed Ming Zhan Lu in the discussion of “translating other cultures,” reminding creators that when adding fantasy elements to real locations, they must still understand cultural data, taboos, and representation responsibility. This position is suitable for viewing Wei Tsung-cheng: he indeed rearranged legends, but did not treat Taiwanese folklore as a set of interchangeable icons. When adapters use Lin Moniang or other faith characters, the continuity of the work’s worldview and respect for cultural context must be cared for together. 8
Thus, Wei Tsung-cheng’s “perverted” or “parody” style is not unregulated indulgence. It is closer to a working method: first observing daily life in sufficient detail, then pushing the order in politics, history, or faith to the absurd boundary. Readers laugh first, then have the opportunity to discover that the thing pushed off-center has always existed in their own lives.
What He Leaves Behind Is Not a Moe Character, but a Path to Continue
Wei Tsung-cheng’s works are easily reduced to a few labels: political parody, adult jokes, moe Mazu, Taiwanese manga IP. But arranging these labels together actually misses his core work. He repeatedly shrinks abstract big topics back to concrete scenes: power returns to the actions of political figures, faith returns to the entrance of Mazu temples, locality returns to Sanxia and Ximending, cultural conflict returns to how a character should speak.
Ming Zhan Lu does not package “Taiwan” as an easy-to-export commodity. It is more like a city built by the author from life: deities can walk in, yokai have their own family relationships, police and Taoist priests handle cases together, and the manga artist himself might be called to the stage to play Seventh Uncle. This city is not clean, nor neat; precisely because of this, it does not look like a tourism poster.
From Emperor Ma Descends in 2009 to the serialization of Ming Zhan Lu starting in 2010, Wei Tsung-cheng used “making people laugh” as an entry, hiding politics, faith, local legends, and industry dilemmas behind the entrance. When Lin Moniang moved from comic panels to an 8-meter-high lantern, then onto the gezaixi stage, what was truly moved out was not a character, but the confidence that Taiwanese creators can build worldviews using their own lives.
Wei Tsung-cheng once said, “I’m just a manga artist.” 5 But a person who “just draws manga” allowed Sanxia’s yokai to walk to Ximending, allowed Mazu to pass through pages, lanterns, and stages, and allowed readers to reimagine: Could the streets we pass every day originally be home to a mythology that hasn’t been drawn yet?
Further Reading
- Creative Manga Battle: _Ming Zhan Lu_ Works Page — Work settings and official work information.
- Ming Hua Yuan _Ming Zhan Lu_ Adaptation Report — Viewing how manga leaves the paper from the perspective of gezaixi and cross-media adaptation.
Image Sources
This article embeds a Mazu image from Wikimedia Commons, presented via a hotlink, without downloading or re-hosting the image. The image file page is File:Mazu.jpg, author Jet.Xu, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. This image is used only for illustrative purposes of the folk religious context, is not a work by Wei Tsung-cheng, and is not the 2017 Lin Moniang lantern.
References
- Mazu Daily News: Young Girl Lin Moniang Animated Portrait, Mazu Lantern Debuts at Taipei Lantern Festival — 2017 Taipei Lantern Festival event report, recording Wei Tsung-cheng’s authorization of the Lin Moniang lantern, and specific data such as the lantern’s height, width, length, and parade route.↩2
- Central Broadcasting System: Ming Hua Yuan Innovatively Performs Ming Zhan Lu — 2020 report on the 2021 Ming Hua Yuan performance, providing story background, performance dates, cross-boundary production, and original audio from Wei Tsung-cheng’s interview.↩234
- OPENTIX Editorial: Creative Taboos of Divine Grace Descending? Super IP Adaptation Source: Interview with Ming Zhan Lu’s Wei Tsung-cheng — 2022 cultural platform interview, recording Wei Tsung-cheng’s original words on Sanxia, life取材 (取材/inspiration), Taoist sects, Mazu temple habits, adaptation principles, and the origins of long-form serialization.↩234567891011
- Taipei Times: Comics feature local deities, beliefs — 2011 English report, recording Ming Zhan Lu’s use of Mazu as the central character, and work details such as the young girl image, meat buns, and honey lemon.↩
- [Openbook Reading Magazine: Interview] The Perverted Magician Who Condenses Taiwan’s Three Souls and Seven Spirits: Manga Artist Wei Tsung-cheng](https://www.openbook.org.tw/article/p-61406) — 2019 profile interview, organizing Emperor Ma Descends, political satire, life observation, Ming Zhan Lu, and Wei Tsung-cheng’s self-description “I’m just a manga artist.”↩2345678
- [Openbook Reading Magazine: Table Talk] Manga Jianghu, Judging Character by Morality, Not Ups and Downs: Wei Tsung-cheng and Han Jing-yue’s Home-Cooked Meals](https://www.openbook.org.tw/article/p-62037) — 2019 author-editor dialogue, recording Emperor Ma Descends sales, Ming Zhan Lu first volume sales, Lin Moniang IP-ification, and the context of long-form publishing cooperation.↩2345
- Asian Ethnology: The Malevolent Icon Lantern Incident — 2023 academic paper, studying the cultural transfer of Ming Zhan Lu’s Lin Moniang in the 2017 lantern and 2021 gezaixi from the perspectives of Taiwanese folk religion, popular culture, and public display.↩2345
- CCC Manhua Platform: Imagining Other Cultures: Unvisited Foreign Lands, Long-Remembered Spaces — 2020 official special issue, listing Ming Zhan Lu as a work set in real Taiwanese locations, adding fantasy elements to real scenes, and discussing cultural取材 and representation ethics.↩