Tsai Chih-Chung

 

In my previous post, Zhuangzi's Teachings- Part 1, I used the illustrations (comic panels) from his book Zhuangzi Speaks. A bilingual (Chinese - English) version of Zhuangzi.

Tsai Chih-chung is indeed a real interesting character.

His Early Life

Born in 1948 in Changhua, Taiwan, Tsai was baptized Catholic and grew up hearing Bible stories. He decided at age four that he would draw for a living and set his sights on becoming a cartoonist by nine . 

At 15, while still in junior high, he left school and moved alone to Taipei to become a professional comic artist . The story about convincing a publisher while underage fits this period: he was a teenager when he entered the industry professionally.

Business Success and Animation

Tsai founded Far East Cartoon in 1977 and later Dragon Cartoon in 1981. His animated film Older Master Q (七彩卡通老夫子) won the Golden Horse Award for Best Animated Feature in 1981 and set a box-office record in Taiwan . 

By 1985, he owned three properties and calculated he could live on instant noodles until age 80 if he never gambled or took risks. He decided he needed to do something more meaningful .

Self-Education Across Disciplines

This is where Tsai becomes genuinely unusual. He was almost entirely self-taught. He claimed he learned calculus in three days, Japanese in three months, and could tell you the day of the week you were born within seconds . 

At 50, he shut himself away for ten years to study theoretical physics and mathematics, producing Oriental Universe and other books. He filled his home with physics texts and wrote 14 million words of notes, even taping unsolved equations to his bathtub . He reportedly claimed he could prove Einstein's theory of relativity wrong .

Wealth and Renunciation

Tsai was indeed wealthy. Over time he donated his vast collection—including thousands of gilded bronze Buddha statues valued in the hundreds of millions of yuan—to Shaolin Temple. 

In November 2020, at age 72, he was ordained as a sramanera (novice monk) under Abbot Shi Yongxin, receiving the Dharma name Shi Yanyi (释延一) . The ordination was specifically a sramanera ordination because Shaolin tradition does not grant full bhiksu ordination to those over 70 .

The Bilingual Classics Translator

The American professor who translated his Chinese classics series is Brian Bruya, who holds a PhD in comparative philosophy from the University of Hawaii. 

His English translations gave Tsai's Zhuangzi Speaks, Laozi Speaks, and others a wide English-reading audience, with the Analects English edition alone selling millions of copies across dozens of countries .

What makes Tsai striking is not that he rejected school—it is that he built an entire intellectual life outside of it, on his own terms, and sustained that curiosity for seventy years.