Cai Zhizhong, who was born in the last century, said that he likes to be lonely and can't do anything without loneliness.
Now 73 years old, he is still talking and laughing, crane hair. He often imagined that he was the only one left in the whole universe, and that must be wonderful.
At the age of four and a half, Cai Zhizhong, who knew that he wanted to draw cartoons to death, vividly interpreted Zhang Ailing's "fame should be early".
He is a geek, doing things, pursuing the ultimate, without a trace of harmony, contrary to many worldly ideas. In those years, he buried his talents between silent drawing paper and throbbing figures.
Cai Zhizhong, who has great earning power, is deeply reclusive and still wears patched clothes and pants. He insisted on not eating breakfast for more than 40 years, eating only one meal a day, or a bowl of porridge with very few rice grains, plus a piece of curd milk.
Rolling red dust, he felt some desolation in the light taste of the porridge, and he has always loved the world.
Cai Zhizhong, who looked thin and weak, walked ethereally, wrinkles of different thicknesses crisscrossed the vicissitudes of his face, but those eyes were always shining.
His paintings are always large areas of white space, the lines are clean and minimalist, calm and free, like his own temperament.
It was the spiritual world that belonged to Cai Zhizhong alone, and no one could go in.
At 9:00 a.m. on November 17, 2020, the Songshan Shaolin Temple in winter brought its own coolness, the cliffs were restored, and the prayer flags fluttered endlessly.
In the clouds, the faint bells of the temple drifted in.
On this day, the then 72-year-old cartoonist Cai Zhizhong was shaved at the Shaolin Temple of Songshan in the ancestral court of Zen Buddhism, with the name Ofe, and his long black and white hair slowly fell to the ground in the presence of the two orders of the Shaolin Temple.
At this moment, no one knows what he is thinking.
In an interview many years ago, he said that he would become a monk in the Shaolin Temple, and when he was old, he would be buried in the Shaolin Temple.
Now that this is a reality, he can completely decide where his life goes.
Monks are not necessarily born, Cai Zhizhong has the unworldly temperament of the Taoist bone fairy style, and has only done painting in his life, and the famous "Lao Tzu Said" and "Zhuangzi Said" are all from his hands. There is no teacher, it is all self-study.
It's a genius, but it's also an idiot.
After renunciation, Cai Zhizhong lost his long hair, what he did not lose was his arrogance outside of the regularity, and his eyes were still clear and transparent, as if he would never grow old.
Cai Zhizhong was dressed very plainly, always wearing a yellowed white shirt, patched coarse linen pants, carrying an irregularly shaped cloth bag, and the shoes on his feet were torn.
When one person finds his favorite, the others don't care.
When he walked, he carried the ethereal feeling of the xianfeng Dao bone, and when he opened his mouth, it was an authentic minnan taste.
In 1948, Cai Zhizhong was born in rural Changhua, Taiwan, a family of equals and freedoms.
In their house, there were no questions or accusations.
In his childhood, Cai Zhizhong was very naughty, and his mother would stand on the edge of the barn and call him to go home for dinner after cooking, but he himself played happily outside.
Cai Zhizhong's parents
It was a full hour and a half before he came home, opened the bamboo cage, and covered the cover after eating, never being scolded by his mother.
He went to Changhua to watch a movie, only need to tell his father, not ask if it is okay, Cai Zhizhong knows that his task is to take the last bus of the day to come back.
In the poor countryside with scarce resources, Cai Zhizhong's spirit is rich, and he has been taken by his family to become a Christian since he was a child.
He began to read the Bible at the age of 1 year, and began to think at the age of 3 and a half, and also recited the Book of God, the Virgin Mary and other scriptures.
At a young age, his brain was already filled with stories of various powerful characters, but the more he remembered, the more he felt lost.
Cai Zhizhong, who is only three and a half years old, finds that the people in the story have their own achievements, but they will not know anything.
Cai Zhizhong, who loves to think, often hides under his father's desk, which has a cushion in it, and when he goes in, he will pull the chair in.
It felt like the country used a bougainvillea fence to peel off the empty carriages of the train inside, and he would organize a place to think in it.
Thinking like this for nearly half a year, when he was 4 years old, his father taught him to write on the small blackboard, the first one to write his name, but he did not think that Cai Zhizhong found what he wanted to do in his life on this ordinary board - painting.
"As long as I don't starve to death, I will paint forever for the rest of my life, until I am old and paint until I die."
This had been doomed to the beginning of his extraordinary life.
Cai Zhizhong self-portrait
It was just that in the countryside at that time, almost no one made a living by painting, and there were very few related professions.
By chance, Cai Zhizhong saw someone drawing a movie sign on the side of the road in Changhua, and at that time, these people seemed to be his idols, and he began to teach himself to draw movie signs.
Until the age of 9, Taiwanese comics were popular, and Cai Zhizhong was more clear about his life's ambition: to become a cartoonist.
Knowing what he wanted, he began to study the content and techniques of comics, which he could draw until he forgot to eat.
He used all the pocket money given by his parents to buy comic books, and the blank space of Cai Zhizhong's textbook was full of various characters.
When he started deciding to draw comics, he knew he wasn't the same as other cartoonists. Cai Zhizhong's comics will spend very little time to draw, most of the time is to make up stories.
Whether it was Zhuangzi, Lao Tzu, or later physics or mathematics, he spent 99% of his time understanding the content of the story.
Cai Zhizhong would tell stories to his mother, who would feed him while feeding the chickens.
In 1963, Cai Zhizhong, who was in his second year of junior high school, dropped out of school.
In his perception, diplomas are not important, and it is better to learn from teachers than to learn by yourself. In his second year of junior high school, he sent his four-page comic work to the Shuying Publishing House in Taipei.
Of course, the publisher did not know that the author was only 15 years old, but said to him that you are very good at drawing, and we invited you to be a cartoonist.
On the afternoon of receiving the reply, Cai Zhizhong was very happy, and he said to his mother: "Mom, tomorrow I will take the morning bus to Taipei, and I will never come back." ”
His mother told him that he had to talk to his father about this matter, and Cai Zhizhong had spoken countless words with his mother in his life, but he had spoken no more than 50 words with his father, eldest brother, second brother, sister, and sister in his lifetime.
That night, my father sat in a wicker chair after dinner and read the newspaper. Cai Zhizhong stood behind him, and he said lightly: "Dad, I am going to Taipei tomorrow." ”
"What are you going to do?"
"A painting of a painting."
"Got a job?"
"Found it."
"Then go for it."
When he was a teenager, the father and son said goodbye, only 28 words, never repeated, plain as water.
Father did not look back.
Nor did he stand in front of his father.
On the day he left his hometown, Cai Zhizhong felt happier than ever.
Carrying the 200 Taiwan dollars given by his father, he carried a suitcase and took the bus to Changhua, and then to Taipei to take a tricycle.
When taking the train, Cai Zhizhong walked to the last section of the carriage, looked at the tracks and ran backwards, and he shouted at the fading hometown: "I will never come back, never come back." ”
After arriving in Taipei, the owner of the comic book publishing house learned that Cai Zhizhong was so small that it was not much taller than the suitcase.
When he first arrived, the place where he lived was very bad, it was a small room of only four square meters, with only two bunk beds in it, sleeping four people, but the heart of the teenager was beautiful.
Years from now, he will have three mansions in the best locations.
Cai Zhizhong gets up at four o'clock in the morning every day to draw, and the voice in his ear suddenly changes from the sound of birds and roosters in the countryside to the sound of cars starting and horns, and he suddenly realizes that he is now a professional cartoonist.
He kept drawing cartoons every day, and he refused to go to bed until he was late. The boss said to go to bed and paint tomorrow when he wakes up.
Cai Zhizhong just should be reconciled, but he refused to sleep, and by two o'clock in the morning, he was still drawing, and he couldn't wait to see his first comic work.
It felt like a nine-month-pregnant mother desperate to give birth to her own child, so she couldn't sleep and rushed to finish things as soon as she woke up.
In his view, completing things is not work, it is the greatest enjoyment of life.
"Not a single day in my life has been working, I've been doing what I like."
On the day of receiving his salary for the first time, the boss saw that Cai Zhizhong painted quickly and well, and doubled his original salary of 300 yuan.
For the first time in his life, he got a salary, grabbed 600 yuan to the post office and sent 450 yuan to his father in the countryside, and attached a letter, the end of which was written like this:
"Dad, you are the first calligrapher in the whole township, but I will not only become the best cartoonist in the whole flower bed township, the best in Changhua, and the best in Taiwan, but one day I will become the best cartoonist in Asia."
A teenager who came to Taipei alone, this painting is more than thirty spring, summer, autumn and winter, he enjoys the surprise moments brought to him by painting, and also enjoys the loneliness of being alone in a foreign country.
Cai Zhizhong, who has an extremely strong desire to create, has no chance to urge his manuscript.
On February 22, 1977, on the fifth day of the first lunar year, Cai Zhizhong started from scratch and founded the Far East Cartoon Company, and covered all the cartoon commercials in Asia at that time.
He is a different boss, and when everyone is off work, Cai Zhizhong is still drawing manuscripts in the studio, and late one night he suddenly wanted to understand one thing: "The amount of wealth depends on desire, as long as the desire is greater than his own wealth, there is no money." ”
Cai Zhizhong and the company's employees
After the establishment of far east cartoon company, the comic works produced were the first-class level in Taiwan, which made four or five other small studios in Taipei close down and could not continue to operate, and Cai Zhizhong figured out some things:
"People first have to choose what they are best at and like the most, and then do it to the extreme." If we can achieve this, no matter what we do, there is no unsuccessful. ”
In 1981, Cai Zhizhong founded Dragon Cartoon Company. During this period, cartoon movies such as "Colorful Cartoon Old Master" and "OolongYuan" were filmed.
Among them, "Colorful Cartoon Old Master" won the Best Cartoon Feature Film Award, and the scene was full, breaking the box office record of Taiwanese films with a box office of 73.5 million Taiwan dollars.
Cai Zhizhong vividly interpreted Zhang Ailing's "fame should be early".
Many artists are ashamed to talk about money, Cai Zhizhong is different, he is willing to talk about money, in his view, art is money.
He himself is a person who does not spend much money, and Cai Zhizhong never hides his true thoughts in his heart, "I don't love money, I love to do things." ”
When Cai Zhizhong was 36 years old, he had a deposit of NT$8.6 million in the bank plus 3 large houses in the best locations, and he seemed to have become a successful person in the secular sense.
During this period, he met Sanmao, Gulong, Cai Lan and other friends, and when Cai Lan went to Cai Zhizhong's house as a guest, he was stunned by the house full of Buddha statues and laughed that he was not an earthling.
The master joked to himself: "If you encounter an earthquake and be crushed to death by the Buddha statue, it is also a very interesting way to die." ”
Cai Zhizhong studio
The Buddha statue was one of the important inspirations for Cai Zhizhong's creation, and he spent a lot of time visiting senior monks everywhere, and realized that he had earned enough money in his lifetime, and every day after that.
There are no regrets in life, and the rest of the time must be done more meaningful things.
He calculated the account, and from then on, as long as he did not gamble money, did not borrow other people's money, did not invest, did not guarantee, and lived to be 80 years old and still had food to eat.
This is equivalent to financial freedom.
Cai Zhizhong pursues the ultimate in everything, must be the first, in an interview with reporters he said: "The second place is useless, the second place is the number one loser." ”
After that, he left his fame and fortune, left his family, and went to Japan to chase his big dream of manga, which was the second time in his life.
In Japan, he rents a tiny house, lives with locals, and continues to think about his manga themes. The paranoid Cai Zhizhong wanted to create something in this strange land that the great Japanese cartoonists could not draw.
Cai Zhizhong's comic works
In four years, Cai Zhizhong painted the Zhuzi Hundred Families series, the longest time he sat in a chair and painted for 58 hours, did not leave, did not sleep, just to make a 4-minute TV title.
He hadn't opened the door for 42 days, shut himself in the house just to accomplish one thing, almost to the point of madness.
Working for a long time every day, Cai Zhizhong did not have sore arms and neck pain, he had never been sick in his life, he had never been to a hospital, and he said that he would not go to the hospital until he died.
Cai Zhizhong joked that his face was not very good, but his ass was very strong and could sit for a long time, "My greatness is not my face, but my ass." During the whole creative process, the only thing he could move was his fingers.
As long as he is in one place and in one place, all the sounds cannot be heard.
His zhuangzi, Lao tzu, Confucius and others are formed in a concise line outline, and the vivid and lively "Zhihu Zhiye" is far more acceptable than the words in the textbook.
In his view, it was the responsibility of the cartoonist to make obscure words easy to understand.
Cai Zhizhong's work "Zhuangzi Said"
Cai Zhizhong uses the vivid form of comics to spread traditional Chinese literature to more places, and the "manga" in comics is that there is no boundary, no regulations, like his own heart.
From Zhuangzi and Lao Tzu to The Analects, and from the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra to the Six Ancestral Tantras, he used his unique perceptual power to leap the wisdom of thousands of years on the paper.
This series of traditional Chinese literary works once made Sanmao sigh: "The wisdom of Cai Zhizhong has enabled this generation of Chinese, who regard the ancients as fearful, to find the enjoyment of their spirit and the purification of their hearts." ”
Cai Zhizhong and Sanmao
When Cai Zhizhong drew the cartoon, Zhuangzi's facial expression and clothing appeared almost at the same time, and what he thought in his heart was completely taken care of.
Sometimes it is better to draw than expected, and he will feel that life is like a sweet river, expressed through his own hands, and he will be moved to tears.
It turns out that life is so wonderful.
To this day, all the comic books he publishes, any punctuation, a word, a line, a character, are all drawn by his own hands, he hates impurities in the paintings, and has an absolute obsessive-compulsive disorder of the work.
Cai Zhizhong acts as a person and pursues the ultimate, without a trace of generalization.
In those years, he buried his talents between silent drawing paper and throbbing figures.
Works by Cai Zhizhong
In 1990, 42-year-old Cai Zhizhong and his wife and daughter traveled to Vancouver, and he was not happy.
In his days in a foreign land, he felt like a soldier who had left the familiar battlefield, and the Buddhist scriptures that accompanied him the most in those days.
There is a glass house in Vancouver, and Cai Zhizhong looks at the starry sky at the glass house, feels ashamed, and abandons the mother who raised him, the land of his hometown.
After reading buddhist scriptures for two months, he finally decided to return to China, leaving his wife and daughter behind.
He said to his wife, "If you stay here, I must go back." If I die in Vancouver one day, I will definitely not be reconciled and cry. ”
In the three years since, Cai Zhizhong has made more than twenty trips between Taipei and Vancouver, staying in Vancouver for only two weeks at a time, and he needs a lot of time to create in Taipei.
During those years, he repeatedly studied Buddhism and created a large number of zen-related cartoons, simple and clean lines, innocent ancients, and interesting.
Cai Zhizhong has always believed that Buddhism does not need to be explained in words, and that knowing the original mind can understand the meaning of it.
In 1998, when Cai Zhizhong's comic book career was in full swing, he quietly retired and retreated for ten years to study physics.
He spent ten years and forty days studying physics, just to challenge the highest knowledge in the universe, others did not understand, but he enjoyed it, the world of genius does not need others to understand.
Surprisingly, during this decade, Cai Zhizhong remained prolific, and his retreat work "Oriental Universe" was the result of his bold challenge to the public theory of physics based on the oriental philosophical view, and challenged the special theory of relativity with vivid cartoons.
Bluntly saying that Einstein was wrong, Cai Zhizhong was the first person.
When he was alone in the room to study the physical problems that had plagued him for a long time, Cai Zhizhong was moved to his knees, and you felt that the whole room was glowing, and he was in tears.
Cai Zhizhong has been working tirelessly for more than 50 years, and his writings are equal. Many people call him very hard, he does not think so, saying that hard work is strange!
"I've never worked hard in my life because I'm enjoying it, and when you're doing what you love most, there's no such thing as hard work."
Yes, if there is no direction, simple effort, blind effort, useless.
Cai Zhizhong, who has a strong ability to make money, is as indifferent as water in material terms, and he only spends one hundred Taiwan dollars a day, which is also used to buy cigarettes and drink coffee.
, duration 01:55
He lived in seclusion and still wears patched trousers.
He insisted on not eating breakfast for 48 years, eating only one meal a day, or a bowl of porridge with very few grains of rice, plus a piece of curd milk.
If you are more luxurious, you can serve two pieces of tofu milk, one in the bowl and the other on top.
Sometimes, Cai Zhizhong will choose to fast, he once did not eat for five days, only drink coffee, "your body likes, do what the body likes, I never use perseverance, it is natural."
Cai Zhizhong's material requirements were extremely low from the beginning, and when he finished painting "Zhuangzi" at nine o'clock in the evening, he went downstairs to eat a bowl of Yangchun noodles at the noodle stall, and made an exception to add a brine egg to celebrate.
After eating, he went upstairs to paint seventeen pages of Lao Tzu, and did not go to bed until two o'clock in the morning, and the creation was not for him to make himself famous and rich, it was not the purpose.
Cai Zhizhong, who is good at drawing Zen and Guoxue comics, lives a seemingly indisputable life, but he is very worldly, and when he was a comic book entrepreneur, he worked until the early hours of the morning in order to become the first in the industry.
These two contradictory personalities, mixed with each other and not conflicting in his body, make people feel appropriate.
In terms of living habits, Cai Zhizhong is incompatible with tradition, and he has many unique views in his thinking.
He bluntly said that effort is useless, that effort is only a little better than not working hard, and that thinking must go ahead of effort.
This is a madman's act, and it is also due to character.
Such bluntness and wantonness, probably few people can do it.
Cai Zhizhong once said that life is like oranges, some oranges are large and sour, some oranges are small and sweet, some people will complain about acid when they get big, and those who get sweet will complain about small.
To him, "If I get a small orange I'll be glad it's sweet, and if I get a sour orange I'll be thankful it's big." Let the heart be like a mirror, no expectation, no remorse, things come fully reflected, things have been restored to emptiness, and a million times will not crack. ”
It was his own spiritual world, and no one could walk into it.
When Cai Zhizhong was 72 years old, it was no accident that he chose to become a monk.
In 2000, the first time he went to Hangzhou, he had already thought about his life after that: "I was born in Taiwan, and I will grow old in Hangzhou and be buried in the Shaolin Temple. ”
If a person understands life, he will not be afraid of death.
Cai Zhizhong, a born apocalyptic, explained the idea of being buried in the Shaolin Temple after death: "If you bury me in Taipei or Hangzhou, there is no economic benefit, and you can bury me in the Shaolin Temple with a ticket." ”
After becoming a monk at the Shaolin Temple, Cai Zhizhong said goodbye to his former self. Comic book masters, philosophers, physics researchers... All identities, for him ever since, were just an empty dream in the red dust of the past.
This time at the Shaolin Temple, he was a return to life. When the wind rises, he is in the wind; when the clouds pass, he is in the clouds.
From the age of four and a half to now, Cai Zhizhong has almost lived two or three lifetimes of others.
In this regard, he said confidently: "No, it is ten lifetimes of life." ”
At the age of 73, he still talks and laughs, and his crane hair is strong. He often imagined that he was the only one left in the whole universe, and that must be wonderful.
Rolling red dust, he felt some of the desolation of life in the light taste of the porridge, coarse tea and light rice, fireworks in the world.
Cai Zhizhong is not a returnee, just a passer-by.
Living in the current era, he has no mobile phone, no food, no title and business card, no contact with people, but he has completely mastered his life.
Where the old man went, only he could steer the direction of the wind.
Maybe the moment he really came to the end of his life, he was either buried in the mountains or gone with the wind, just like the exodus he had when he was fifteen years old.
You don't have to explain it to anyone, just talk to yourself.
After tasting the taste of life, Cai Zhizhong laughed loudly and retreated into the fog.