Billed as one of Asia's biggest book fairs, the 16th Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE, 第十六屆台北國際書展) opens its doors to the public today. Activities in Exhibition Hall One were restricted to industry professionals yesterday.
While many of the participants will have a serious purpose for attending the event - it's a major forum for copyright negotiations - there's plenty to enjoy for the average reader. The country in focus this year is Australia, which will be showing off its multicultural and youthful outlook on the world. The dominating presence of Tony and Maureen Wheeler, the founders of the Lonely Planet series, segues the focus on Australia into another theme, also multicultural and youthful: travel.
Given the heavy intellectual atmosphere of last year's Russian national theme, this year's fair is certainly more accessible, though, as Australians are quick to point out, they are hardly lightweights in the intellectual literary stakes. (Oz boasts only one Nobel Laureate in literature in the shape of Patrick White, but Peter Carey and JM Coetzee - a naturalized Australian - are among those tipped for the future recipients of the accolade). Be that as it may, the mood of the Australian presence is young and international, with design accorded as much importance as the written word.
One of the stars of the Australian delegation is Shaun Tan (陳志勇), whose graphic novels have won numerous awards. A display of manuscript drawings of his work is on display in the Australian Pavilion.
The Travel Literature Pavilion is a first for the TIBE. Combining travel with literature, the pavilion takes traveling to a new level through exhibits such as the Click! Taiwan gallery and the Box Fun on Traveling art installation created with contributions from TIBE spokesman A-hsin (阿信), vocalist for the band Mayday (五月天), as well as over 20 local Taiwanese authors and travel writers.
Exciting illustrations and photographs from the Etonnants Voyageurs Festival, which is dedicated to travel literature and held each year in Saint-Malo, a resort town in northern France, adds to the mood of wanderlust. Michel Le Bris, the festival's founder, and Gilles Lapouge, travel writer and producer of the well-known French TV reading program Apostrophes, share their travel tales at the fair.
For those who want to judge a book by its cover, there's no better place to visit than the Most Beautiful Book Design Pavilion, which features winners from the Best Book Design from All Over the World award offered by the Stiftung Buchkunst (Book Art Foundation) in Germany. It also features the works of Japanese book designer Sugiura Kohei, acclaimed as the "Giant of Japanese Design," works selected for the Best of Asian Design by Lu Jingren (呂敬人), and winners of the Golden Butterfly Award - Taiwan's top book design prize. You don't even need to look inside; which is fortunate, for in most cases you can't.
Linden Lin (林載爵), chairman of the Taiwan Book Fair Foundation, was quick to point out that the book exhibition's activities extend beyond the limits of the Taipei World Trade Center (TWTC) exhibition halls. Now in its fourth year, the Reading Festival promotes reading in schools. This includes the Reading Learning Handbook program, which is organized in conjunction with Taipei Municipal libraries and produces reading guides that encourage students to access libraries and TIBE resources.
Last year, the TIBE organized a Reading Train that took students from remote parts of Ilan directly to Taipei for the exhibition. Today, the train will transport over 200 students from remote regions and Aboriginal communities in Hsinchu County to the TIBE.
"There really isn't much point if the activity is only restricted to Taipei residents," Lin said at a press conference held to launch TIBE.
The Anime & Comics Pavilion and the Fantasy Pavilion are also aimed at bringing children back into the world of books through the presence of artists and a chance to enjoy the Computer Graphics Experience Zone.
Event information:
TIBE 2008 will be taking over all three exhibition halls of the TWTC until Monday.
Opening hours: 10am to 6pm, extended to 10pm on Friday and Saturday and 8pm on Sunday
Tickets: NT$100 for adults, NT$80 concessions. An event pass valid for the whole six days is NT$180 for adults, NT$150 concessions
On the Net: Detailed schedules of daily events can be found at TIBE's Web site at www.tibe.org.tw/2008/
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
The latest Formosa poll released at the end of last month shows confidence in President William Lai (賴清德) plunged 8.1 percent, while satisfaction with the Lai administration fared worse with a drop of 8.5 percent. Those lacking confidence in Lai jumped by 6 percent and dissatisfaction in his administration spiked up 6.7 percent. Confidence in Lai is still strong at 48.6 percent, compared to 43 percent lacking confidence — but this is his worst result overall since he took office. For the first time, dissatisfaction with his administration surpassed satisfaction, 47.3 to 47.1 percent. Though statistically a tie, for most
As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) — the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda — he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration. Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the
Six weeks before I embarked on a research mission in Kyoto, I was sitting alone at a bar counter in Melbourne. Next to me, a woman was bragging loudly to a friend: She, too, was heading to Kyoto, I quickly discerned. Except her trip was in four months. And she’d just pulled an all-nighter booking restaurant reservations. As I snooped on the conversation, I broke out in a sweat, panicking because I’d yet to secure a single table. Then I remembered: Eating well in Japan is absolutely not something to lose sleep over. It’s true that the best-known institutions book up faster
RSS