BEIJING, May 27 (Xinhua) -- Ding Cong, a popular Chinese caricaturists known for portraying famous fiction figures, passed away Tuesday in Beijing at the age of 93, Wednesday's China Daily reported.

    He died of cerebrovascular disease, the newspaper quoted his wife Shen Jun as saying.

    The caricaturist left the words that no farewell ceremony or memorial meeting would be held after his death, Shen said. "He was a common person and wanted to leave as a common person."

    Ding was best known for his illustrations of characters from novels by Lu Xun (1881-1936) and Lao She (1899-1966), as well as for his column with Reading (Dushu) magazine.

    Born in Shanghai in 1916, Ding began to publish caricatures in the early 1930s. During the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-1945), he worked as an editor, stage designer and art teacher in southwest China and Hong Kong and released caricatures to promote resistance against the Japanese invasion.

    After the founding of New China in 1949, he was deputy editor-in-chief of the People's Pictorial. For two decades after 1957, he could not publish caricatures because of the extreme leftist policies of that time.

    His work resumed after 1978 and published more than 30 collections of caricatures in the last three decades. Some of his books were published for English, German and Japanese markets.