Kong Hong

Kong was a native of Chongming, Jiangsu (now part of Shanghai).[1] He entered Shanghai High School in 1931. He entered the journalism department of the Nanjing School of Politics (南京中央政治學校, the predecessor of National Chengchi University) in 1933. In August 1937, at the start of the Battle of Shanghai, the school evacuated to Lushan, Jiangxi, and eventually ended up in Changsha, where it was located when he graduated in 1938. Soon after his graduation he married Chou Chia-yen (周家熙). His first son was born in 1939, and was followed by four more sons from 1942 to 1956 and a daughter in 1963.[2]

Kong's early career took him through various positions as a cartoonist, a reporter, and an executive in both print journalism and radio.[3] He began his media career having manhua published in Lin Yutang's Analects magazine (論語雜誌) in 1932. After his graduation from the Nanjing School of Politics, he worked for the Kuomintang's newly-established China Cultural Service. In 1942, at the height of the Second Sino-Japanese War, he was promoted to manager of the Kuomintang's Cultural Construction Printing Company (文化建設印刷公司), in which capacity he was posted to Kolkata, India, in 1944 as a writer for the Chinese Journal of India (印度日報), and was promoted to editor-in-chief in 1945. After the war he was stationed in Hong Kong, where he set up the Kuomintang's Overseas Publishing Company (海外出版社), and then returned to Shanghai to take up the position of general manager of the China Cultural Service. After the retreat of the government of the Republic of China to Taiwan in 1949, he first went again to Hong Kong, where he worked for an American publishing company (思文出版社) producing anti-Communist pamphlets. He continued to work for them after moving to Taipei in 1951, and also had cartoons published in the Central Daily News beginning in 1952.[2]

Kong made his debut as a film producer with the documentary City of Cathay (1960), under the auspices of Chinese Art Films. Initially screened at the 21st Venice International Film Festival in its English translation by Loh I-cheng of the Government Information Office, it introduced the Song dynasty handscroll painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival.[3][4][5] In 1963, Central Motion Picture Corporation (CMPC) president James Shen appointed Kong as general manager of the CMPC.[2][6] Kong brought the Asian Film Festival to Taiwan for the first time the following year.[3] During his tenure at CMPC, Kong drew inspiration from the technical style of Italian neorealist films, but sought to avoid their pessimistic themes. He thus brought to CMPC a style he dubbed healthy realism in films such as Li Hsing's The Oyster Girl (1963) and Beautiful Duckling (1964).[7][8] These were both major commercial successes that helped to break the domination of Taiwan's film market by Hong Kong-produced Mandarin films as well as open up new markets for the Taiwan film industry in Southeast Asia. Kong further supported Li Hsing in making film adaptations of the romance novels of Chiung Yao, namely Four Loves and The Silent Wife (1965). Pai Ching-jui, a graduate of Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, also started his filmmaking career at CMPC under Kong's tenure, first co-directing the historical drama Fire Bulls (1966) and then making his solo directorial debut with Lonely Seventeen (1967); Kong then supported Pai in bringing the commedia all'italiana style to CMPC films with the commercially and critically successful The Bride and I (1969) and Home Sweet Home (1970). Kong resigned from his position at CMPC in 1972 due to health reasons and creative conflicts with Li and Pai.[9]

After leaving CMPC, Kong became a professor at the Chinese Culture University in Taipei. In 1975, Loh I-cheng invited Kong to New York to become the editor-in-chief of a Chinese-language newspaper, the Americas Daily (華僑美洲日報).[2][10] In the 1980s, Kong wrote a series of four books containing biographies of various Chinese historical figures.[2]

Kong served as eastern U.S. president of the National Chengchi University Alumni Association.[2] He received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 36th Golden Horse Awards in 1999.[11] He died due to respiratory failure in 2004.[2]

• 《兩漢人物》 [Personages of Han]. 古人今談 [Modern View of the Ancients]. Vol. 1. 九歌出版社 [Chiu Ko Publishing]. 1983 [民國72年]. OCLC 10162961.
• 《三國人物》 [Personages of the Three Kingdoms]. 古人今談 [Modern View of the Ancients]. Vol. 2. 九歌出版社 [Chiu Ko Publishing]. 1983 [民國72年]. OCLC 658055570.
• 《隋唐人物》 [Personages of Sui and Tang]. 古人今談 [Modern View of the Ancients]. Vol. 3. 九歌出版社 [Chiu Ko Publishing]. 1984 [民國73年]. OCLC 818731240.
• 《兩宋人物》 [Personages of the Northern and Southern Song]. 古人今談 [Modern View of the Ancients]. Vol. 4. 九歌出版社 [Chiu Ko Publishing]. 1990 [民國79年]. OCLC 823001952.

• Photo with Irene Tsu looking at a brochure for Fire Bulls, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 1967, via Los Angeles Public Library Online Digital Collections