Books offer rare insights into birds, bugs

Born to a farming family in Huaian, Jiangsu province, in 1970, nature and drawing provided an escape from his lonely childhood. Before receiving his first set of paints in his teenage years, he made colors himself with anything he could find. "My childhood dream was to become an art teacher and to keep on drawing bugs," he says. "I was always alone, wondering and tasting the beauty of nature."

He enrolled in the Nanjing Normal University of fine arts in 1991 and after graduation became an art editor at the university press. The campus where he has been living since college is part of Suiyuan, the Qing Dynasty garden built by poet, critic and gourmet Yuan Mei.

The artist's work has won numerous "most beautiful books" prizes in China, as well as international honor and acclaim, including from UNESCO. His most famous work comprises the design of the books Stitched Up, Pingru and Meitang: Our Stories, The Designing Wordsmith and Pork Fat. He also wrote, created and designed a series of publications about his "old pals", such as Next to Bugs, Ants Talk, The Slowpoke Snail and Bugs' Notebook, many of which have been translated into English, Korean, Norwegian and Czech. A new book, themed on bugs' poetry, will be released later this year.

The books are playful and fun to read, combining visual art, painting, literature and graphic design, and "some of them have explored and expanded the range and concept of books, unrolling the rich prospect of book design," says Xu Xiaoding, secretary-general of the International Artist Books Association, which was founded in Beijing in 2019.

Kang Pingping, with the German Book Information Center in Beijing, a branch under the Frankfurt Book Fair, says Zhu is an old friend of the fair and a popular speaker at its Storydrive Asia conference. "Zhu is childlike and creative, always bringing something new to us," Kang says. "He's charming and attractive to many of us and his fans, as he truly loves what he does and pursues."