[1] At age 18 Ye moved to Shanghai,[2] where he found work at a small, short-lived journal Sanri Huabao (Three Day Pictorial).

[4]: 30 Under the leadership of Zhang Guangyu, who recruited the wealthy poet Shao Xunmei as a sponsor,[3] the association successfully relaunched the Shanghai Manhua on 21 April 1928.

[5] Ye drew several covers for the magazine[3] and the back page of the publication carried his comic strip, Mr. Wang.

Inspired by the American strip Bringing Up Father and portraying the daily life of the middle and lower classes of Shanghai,[6] Mr. Wang became one of China's most famous cartoons, eventually being made into 11 films in the 1930s and 40s.

[6] In September 1936, Ye Qianyu, Lu Shaofei, and Zhang Guangyu organized the First National Cartoon Exhibition in Shanghai.

[4]: 34 When Japan invaded China and occupied Shanghai in 1937, Ye Qianyu, together with a group of fellow Shanghai cartoonists, formed the "National Salvation Cartoon Propaganda Corps", which included well-known artists Zhang Leping, Lu Zhixiang, Te Wei, and Hu Kao.

[7]: 92 After the surrender of Japan in 1945, Ye Qianyu went to the United States, where he held a series of exhibitions to show and sell his artworks.

He painted prolifically in the 1950s, including such representative works as Indian Dancing, Autumn of the Summer River, and The Liberation of Beiping.

In 1981 he was appointed Vice President of the Research Institute of Chinese painting, and re-elected vice-chairman of the China Artists Association and member of the National Committee of the CPPCC.

[11][12] In 1935, while he was an editor with the Modern Sketch magazine, Ye fell in love with Liang Baibo, one of the first female Chinese cartoonists and creator of the comic strip Miss Bee.

[8][12] At the start of the Sino-Japanese War, Liang Baibo joined Ye's Salvation Cartoon Propaganda Corps and went to Wuhan with him.

According to Ye Qianyu's daughter Mingming, who lived with her father and was initially hostile to her stepmother, Dai treated her as if she had been her own child.

[11] Ye's last wife was Wang Renmei, a famous actress who had been previously married to the "Film Emperor" Jin Yan.

[12] When Ye Qianyu was accused of being a KMT agent and thrown into prison during the Cultural Revolution, Luo was persecuted for being his ex-wife.