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.
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