In stark contrast to the impossibly good-looking characters of Japanese comics, those in Taiwanese manga artist Li Lung-chieh’s (李隆杰) works are often chunky, bald or strange-looking.
“My worries about a receding hairline started when I was still in senior-high school,” the artist said.
“Since then, I have always wanted to create a different appreciation of beauty by ‘brainwashing’ my readers into thinking that bald is the new handsome,” Li added.
Li, who was selected to represent Taiwan at the 38th Angouleme International Comics Festival in 2011, is known for infusing Taiwanese culture into his works, for example drawing on traditional lion dance culture and busy motorcycle-packed streets.
His latest publication, Taiwan Determination: Legend of Beigang (新世紀北港神拳), was featured in January and June in the bestselling magazine Creative Comic Collection and is set in Yunlin County’s Beigang Township (北港), a place dubbed the “Fists Den” (拳頭窟) because of its reputation as the home of Taiwanese-style kung fu.
The book is based on the real-life stories of a Beigang kung fu legend, “Beigang Six Foot Four” (北港六尺四), and features in detail the violent martial arts battles that ensue when a US wrestler arrives in the township to learn about Chinese medicine.
Li’s equally famous work is Love in the Sea of Motorcycles (愛在機車之海), drawing on the nation’s scooter phenomenon.
The work revolves around a scooter enthusiast who aspires to establish a religion that worships motorbikes, dubbed “Motorcycle-ism.”
Li has also created a dialogue-free comic piece, A Lion Head on the Street (流浪的獅頭), saying that the absence of words makes the physical interactions between characters more important.
“Also, writing dialogue for comics is a real pain on the neck,” Li joked.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
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