By Chen Yi-ching
Staff Reporter
Several of the authors of comic books that won awards at the Excellent Comics Awards on Saturday featured material that touches on traditional beliefs in Taiwan, including deities such as Nuozha (哪吒), Di Ji Zhu (地基主) and Matsu (媽祖).
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
The Excellent Comics Awards, which have been held annually for the past two decades, gave ratings to two groups of authors — those who have already published and those who have yet to do so.
First and third place in the first category went to Shou Hu Ling TOUCH (守護靈TOUCH) by Huang Chia-li (黃佳莉) and Ming Zhan Lu (冥戰錄) by Wei Zhong-cheng (韋宗成).
Xing Fu Tiao Wei Liao (幸福調味料) by Juan Kuang-min (阮光民) and Liu Se Dao Yuan (六色稻遠) by Chang Yi-lin (張宜琳) were in the top three in the second category.
Huang’s comic used the subject of Taiwan’s religious figures, such as Nuozha and others, and narrated the stories of their coming to the mortal realm.
Because of the heavy influence of Japanese comics on the domestic comic industry, “it’s as though we don’t have roots of our own,” Huang said, adding that this was what prompted her to start with figures that were best known and popular in Taiwan.
Religion was one of the most common as well as traditional aspects of Taiwan, Huang said, adding that her mother used to threaten her younger brother when he was unruly that she would send him off to be Nuozha’s son.
The saying stems from the traditional folk belief that children should be raised by their own parents and that if they were given to someone else to be raised, it was a sign that they were not wanted.
Huang received NT$250,000 in prize money for her comic, winning first place in the first category.
Wei’s Ming Zhan Lu had Matsu as the central character, departing from the usual depiction of the goddess and turning her into a cute girl, accentuating the image with Taiwan-centric overtones such as her eating meat buns and drinking honeyed Chinese Meson.
Juan’s comic focused on using condiments made by the main character as the adhesive “glue” in the story’s theme of familial and romantic love.
“Juan’s style is very simple, but the storyline surrounding the main character’s hand-made soy-sauce reflects the extraordinary aspect of the lives of ordinary people,” said Chen Chih-hua (陳治華), chairman of the judges’ panel.
Chang, the other winner in the second group, finished her comic while working at Sanyo Electric (Taiwan) Co Ltd. The content of the comic was about the life of farmers, but Chang herself had no experience or background in farming and had to travel to Taitung to observe the lives of farmers.
Translated by Jake Chung, Staff Writer
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS