Many art critics think that Cheng's work is, as one put it, "full of the emptiness and loneliness that second-generation mainlanders [the children of those who fled the mainland with the KMT] can't get rid of."
許多藝評家認為鄭在東的所有的自畫像，「充滿著外省第二代揮之不去的空虛與寂寞」。