At the age of five and a half, he traveled with his family back to Hong Kong, where his father established a dry goods business.
Hearing that he aspired to be an artist, his instructor gave him the name "King Man" (lit.
Kingman continued his education at the Chan Sun Wen School, where he excelled at calligraphy and watercolor painting.
His critical breakthrough occurred in 1936, when he gained a solo exhibition at the San Francisco Art Association.
[3] Kingman settled in Brooklyn, New York after the war, where he held a position as an art instructor at Columbia University and Hunter College from 1946 for the next ten years.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Kingman worked as an illustrator in the film industry, designing the backgrounds for a number of major motion pictures including "55 Days at Peking", The Sand Pebbles and the Hollywood adaptation of "Flower Drum Song".
[6] In 1981, Kingman made history as the first American artist to be featured in a solo exhibition following the resumption of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China when the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China hosted a critically acclaimed exhibition that drew over 100,000 people.