Zooming in on the animated background: Mediated Dunhuang murals with design in the Conceited General

Abstract The Conceited General (directed by Te Wei, 1956) is widely celebrated as the first Chinese animation to represent a national style (minzu fengge). Taking a closer look, the ‘national style’ manifested in this film also refers to specific zaojing murals at Dunhuang rather than Peking Opera art or a traditional painting technique alone as discussed by existing scholarship. Analysing the Dunhuang background design, the film presents a visual referencing to Dunhuang murals through a process of complex mediation. This paper seeks to trace the history of adaptations of Dunhuang murals manifested in this case. It points to the cultural-historical journey in which zaojing was transformed from architectural-based murals into two-dimensional images that highlight geometrical patterns, and eventually entered the animation as cultural objects. Approaching animation from the perspective of animated background and in an intermedia context, this paper complicates the understanding of the national style and recontextualizes Chinese animation in the long-neglected history of design, both graphic and industrial.