Internet illustrator Yeh Jou-chun (葉柔君) creates popular works and mobile app stickers featuring her pet rabbits, offering tips for pet owners and animal lovers.
Yeh, whose online persona Bu Sih Tu (不死兔, “Immortal Rabbit”) has more than 230,000 followers on Facebook, said that Pu Zih (噗滋) and Pu Ni (噗妮), the characters that made her an online celebrity, are based on her adopted pet rabbits.
Yeh said she wanted a rabbit because it is her Chinese zodiac sign, and has had her first rabbit, Pu Zih, since her college days when she was studying fine art at the Tainan University of Technology.
Photo: CNA
After a laboratory rabbit at the animal husbandry and veterinary sciences department gave birth to a litter, a university friend gave her one of the kits. She later adopted Pu Ni — the more social and friendly of the two — from the Taiwan Rabbit Saving Association.
At the time, the rabbits made occasional appearances on her blog BossTwo420, a cartoon graphic art site that chronicled her relationship with her boyfriend, Yeh said.
However, after she began to sell her work on social media, the rabbits took over the blog and most of her commercial creations, she said.
When demand for stickers on the messaging app Line increased along with its users, she decided to try selling her illustrations, she said.
Yeh said her first batch of stickers on relationships and romance did not reverberate with users, so she switched her focus onto her rabbits, which many of her blog followers seemed to enjoy.
The rabbit-centric illustrations were an instant success, so she also made them the protagonists of her comic strips, Yeh said.
“A whole bunch of things conspired to make Pu Zih into the star rather than a supporting cast member. I am very grateful to have Pu Zih and Pu Ni in my life. They are the inspiration for my creations and brought me joy when my career was ebbing,” she said.
As she owes her commercial success to her pets, she has been paying them back by disseminating knowledge for rabbit owners through her art, Yeh said.
For example, cartoons and popular culture often mislead rabbit owners into thinking their pet should mostly eat carrots, but a healthy diet should be mainly comprised of forage grasses, and carrots should only be served as an occasional snack, she said.
She plans to help raise awareness for adoption and correct rabbit care, and is to collaborate with the Taiwan Rabbit Saving Association on a campaign against pet abandonment.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater