Rebellious And Happy

As a newly emerging industry, cartoon is experiencing a thriving growth in China. This development fosters a subculture group—Chinese cartoon fan— which deserves more scholarly attentions. Japanese cartoons have held a near lock on Chinese market for over 10 years. At present, cartoon, far from being an entertaining tool for the youth, is a way of living for them, pervading all aspects of their life, e.g., dressing, words and deeds.With the development of information technology, cartoon websites and fora of various kinds have become the new front line for cartoon fans. Internet, with its virtuality, swiftness and trans-regionalism, fits the rapid living pace of modern youth and satisfies their craving for novel information. Moreover, Internet makes it possible for cartoon fans from different provinces, or even from different countries, to live together in virtual communities. What they do is more than rebelling for the sake of rebelliousness. They experience pleasure and satisfaction in appreciating cartoons. Besides passive appreciation, they interpret, analyze and study cartoon contexts of various kinds, upon which they contribute to the reproduction and recreation of cartoons. In this study, we focus on the joints between cartoons and internet virtual community, which makes original contributions to improve existing theoretical literatures. As a branch of a subculture group among the youth, cartoon fans arecharacterized by a strong rebellious tint and captivated by the virtual world created by cartoons. Internet virtual community has become a new area of field study for anthropologists. This new area requires new ways of participant observation and arouses new moral and ethical problems.This study is designed to explore new cartoon culture phenomena on the Internet from an anthropological perspective and new ways of participant observation in virtual communities by a field study on the Maplesnow Cartoon Forum. This paper is organized as follows: first, this paper traces the development of cartoons in China and portrays a profile for Maplesnow Cartoon Forum which is a necessary product of the growth of Chinese cartoon. Second, this study, from three angels, interprets living styles of cartoon fans in the forum and demonstrates how cartoon pervades all aspects of the cartoon fans' life. Finally, this paper makes a contrast between cartoon fans and non cartoon fans to examine the life style of cartoon fans from a broader view.