This is a bilingual comic book, in French and Chinese, launched to coincide with last week's Taipei International Book Exhibition where the artist was one of the guests of honor. But what the book in fact describes is the first visit he made here, to the Taipei French Institute's "Lire en Fete" in October 2000. Getting the book out and printed in two languages in such a short time represents pretty quick work.
One advantage that helped speedy production must have been that the drawings are all printed twice, once with French and then again with Chinese text, beginning naturally enough at opposite ends of the book. The French is very simple, and, with the Chinese to help for those who can read it, there cannot be many readers unable to follow the simple narrative one way or another.
The black-and-white drawings have the attraction of presenting things in Taiwanese life with the fresh perception of a visitor, and I for one felt renewed and reinvigorated by it.
Golo's general approach is one of amazement. Like many comedians, he regards himself with a slightly patronizing glance. As a result, he depicts himself as the little man overwhelmed by life. He frequently draws himself in a startled pose. He is intimidated by the roar of the traffic, and by the implied threat of the waiting motorcycles as he timidly ventures out onto a pedestrian crossing on his first morning. The history lesson he is given shortly after arriving sees him bowled over by giant-sized books, then falling asleep and dreaming of nineteenth-century head-hunters and an encounter with the Scottish photographer MJ Thompson, a pioneer of the art in Taiwan.
This vulnerability is part of the mask Golo creates for himself. It's his artistic "persona," and it makes him comic, and yet endears him to us at the same time.
Many Taipei people are named (and depicted) in the book. He is greeted on arrival by two teachers of French at National Taiwan University, Zyl and Jacques. His history teacher is Rene Vienet, a contact in the French community. At an official reception for "Lire en Fete," where he gets to drink French wine from the Cahors region, he meets a fellow cartoonist, Loic Hsiao Yen Chung, and invites him to contribute a double-page spread to the book. He does the same for two others, Richard Matson and one named Push.
Among the many aspects of Taiwanese life covered are fashion -- judged to be important here because Taiwan, as an island, needs to emphasize its connections with the outside world -- and weddings. Some of the rich travel to Europe just to have their wedding photos taken, he's informed, and marriages on the island increased by 30 percent in the year 2000.
Traditional Chinese culture needless to say makes an appearance, and someone is depicted making an offering while at the same time answering a call on a mobile phone. Betel nut consumption gets a mention, and he even meets some of the scantily-clad women who sell the nut. And he's unsurprisingly agog at the popularity of the local stock market.
I learnt quite a bit from this book. I had no idea, for example, that the volume of transactions on the Taiwan bourse is only exceeded by Tokyo and New York. Simulated earthquakes in KTV parlors were new to me as well, as were similar drills conducted in the interests of public education in street-side booths.
And everywhere he goes, Golo shows himself being welcomed and taken out. His fellow cartoonists take him to a pub and teach him to say "Kan Pei" (乾杯). He goes to a hot spring where he's told to observe the others and just do what they do. He thinks of himself as a crab being boiled alive, learns so stay still as an aid to enduring the heat, and finally learns to enjoy the pleasures of an automatic massage chair.
Education, and its importance for Taiwanese, is also featured, as is the presence of women in virtually all occupations. Annette Lu gets a mention in this context, and a drawing.
Not everything of Taiwan is here, of course, but there's a lot. Golo's fellow contributors take the opportunity to remark on the orderly lines waiting for trains in the subway contrasted with the frequent chaos -- roads being dug up, motorbikes parked on the pavements -- above ground. One of them ponders on the question that when there are 100 reasons to detest Taipei, why does he loves it so much?
What is most appealing is that Golo's view of Taiwan and the Taiwanese so often accords with one's own. The place has all sorts of disadvantages -- geographical, political and historical -- and yet it's an undeniably attractive place to be. He doesn't specifically ask why this should be so, but beneath the jokes this is the question he is all the time trying to answer.
There is an implicit reply, too. This is that, precisely because of all the uncertainties, the Taiwanese live from day to day. They live for the moment, just as so many wise men have always advised, and as a result are happy. The problems, possible and actual, themselves give rise to the advantages.
There's an infectious innocence about this book. Almost everyone, I imagine, will read it at a sitting, and when they get up they will, if they're anything like me, look on Taipei with ever so slightly different eyes. The artist is very easily surprised and just as easily charmed. In this he is, in a way, the perfect visitor.
For eight years Golo has been living in Egypt, mostly in Cairo but with a "winter house" in a village close to the Tombs of the Pharaohs in the south. He is currently working on a book illustrating the life of this village, and in addition he contributes to newspapers in both Cairo and Paris. Egypt is lucky to have him, and if he portrays the life there with anything approaching the wit and affection he bestows on Taipei, his hosts will have every reason to be grateful.
Information:
Made in Taiwan
By Golo
259 pages
Les Editions Du Pigeonnier
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located