Taiwan Today

In mid-winter every year, Taipei is home to a red-hot event that draws hundreds of thousands of people from the city and far beyond. First held in 1987 and turned into an annual happening in 1998, in January this year the Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE) at the Taipei World Trade Center (TWTC) attracted 520,000 people, a new record for the six-day event.

The show is organized by the Taipei Book Fair Foundation, which is funded by 15 local publishing houses. Linden Lin, chairman of the foundation as well as publisher and editor-in-chief of Linking Publishing, says that the event is multifunctional, as it not only provides an opportunity for the general public to buy new books, but also serves as a venue for businesses to buy and sell copyrights for them. In fact, on the first day of the show, Hall 1 of the TWTC, the main exhibition space of the book fair, was reserved solely for the use of publishers and specialists interested in copyright deals.

At this year’s TIBE, local publishers and companies set up more than 1,500 booths, or 83 percent of all booths, in the TWTC’s three halls. To promote the works of local writers, the foundation worked with the National Museum of Taiwan Literature in Tainan, southern Taiwan, for the first time, establishing a pavilion dedicated to 15 Taiwanese writers. Each of the writers has created works that have been adapted for cinema or television and some of these adaptations were also screened at the exhibition. “The museum is quite serious about promoting local writers through various forms of marketing, such as international marketing and partner marketing,” says Cheng Pang-chen, the director of the museum, which displayed valuable manuscripts by the Taiwanese writers at its pavilion. “Our marketing channel certainly is becoming broader through working in partnership with TIBE, especially in the international aspect.”

Although the exhibition typically features a wide variety of local books, periodicals and magazines from Taiwan’s publishers, TIBE is also known for opening its doors to the world. This year’s show attracted 507 foreign publishing industry professionals, as well as exhibited publications from an unprecedented 58 countries. “TIBE keeps playing its role as a most important channel through which Taiwan interacts with the international community and disseminates its culture,” says Su Jun-pin, former minister of the Government Information Office (GIO). “It creates dialogues between readers and authors, among publishers and between Taiwan and the world.”

Without a doubt, France, the official guest of honor at TIBE this year, was the show’s focus of attention. The first time France was named guest of honor was 2001, while at the 2006 fair, France and three other European countries shared the honor. In January, this major European cultural force played a big role on various fronts. At the French pavilion, which was impressively designed with an austere black background and white lettering, visitors could not only peruse around 2,500 publications, but also take in miniature galleries of works by French photographer Robert Doisneau and illustrator Nicole Lambert. The former displayed 38 photos of noted French writers as they went about their everyday lives between the 1940s and 1980s, whereas the latter’s illustrations included selections from a book Lambert published last year based on her experiences while traveling around Taiwan.

Muriel Barbery and Philippe Claudel, two well-known, award-winning French novelists, also made appearances at TIBE. Barbery is the author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which was first published in French in 2006 and then in Chinese in 2008. The book went on to become a bestseller in both France and Taiwan and more than 1 million copies have been sold worldwide. For his part, Claudel, the author of 14 novels, flew to Taipei to talk with his Taiwanese fans face-to-face about his book Brodeck’s Report, the Chinese version of which was just published at the beginning of the year. Brodeck’s Report has gained fame for taking an uncompromising—but lyrically written—look at the lynching of an outsider in a small European town, a story that many critics believe carries overtones of the Holocaust.

All told, 41 French writers, publishers, artists and participants appeared in a series of forums dedicated exclusively to France’s publishing sector. Professionals and businesses in the French publishing industry participated in the forums, which went on for an entire day at the show, as they discussed various topics ranging from the sector’s digitization to France’s export strategies. French participants included representatives from important official bodies and organizations such as the French Institute in Taipei, the International Bureau for French Publishing and the National Library of France. “All this is an affirmation of the positive response to TIBE of the French government and private sector,” Su Jun-pin says.

A Major Presence

Along with France, other countries with a major presence at the show included the United States, which introduced local readers to 500 of the most popular titles from 120 publishing houses in that country, as well as Israel, which set up a pavilion and introduced publications in Hebrew for the first time at TIBE. Poland’s pavilion also drew special attention for its exhibit on Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, as 2010 has been dubbed the International Year of Chopin and also marks the 200th anniversary of his birth. The exhibit’s books and posters about Chopin were primarily targeted at classical music enthusiasts.

Aside from its broad global view, this year’s TIBE was impressive for the vibrancy of its varied activities, which included around 500 forums, seminars and book signings. And while France took the place of honor at the show, the January event also had a strong Chinese influence. Around 200 writers from Taiwan and around the world showed up at this year’s event and—largely as a result of the reduction in tensions with mainland China—the number of non-Taiwanese Chinese-language writers broke the previous record, with a total of 12 authors from mainland China, Hong Kong, the United States, Japan and Malaysia flying to Taipei to attend the Global Chinese Writers Summit. In addition, the “Classics 3.0” tour landed at the Taipei show after stopping at prior book fairs in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. Consisting of 24 forums in total, with six held in each city, the tour invited scholars from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan to each introduce a specific classic book to readers.

“I feel closer to the writers and have a deeper understanding of them and their works now,” says Peggy Meng, who bought so many books that some of them were delivered to her home through the home delivery service provided by TIBE publishers. “That gave me an incentive to buy their works.”

“You can find so many of the newest titles at one time,” she says of another factor behind the book fair’s vibrancy. “The selection was really wide, but what impressed me most were the picture books for children. The design and printing are so sophisticated. I don’t think most people can resist taking a look at them.”

Meanwhile, in addition to traditional printed books, the fair also highlighted the newest trend in the publishing industry, that of e-books and e-book readers. Most of the readers and e-books were found in the Reading the Future section, which held nearly 100 booths.

One of the e-book readers that was displayed at the show is manufactured by local company Koobe Inc. and is scheduled to appear on retailers’ shelves this month. “It’s like a small library,” says Chichi Hsiao, product manager of the Client Development Department at Koobe, explaining the features of the company’s handheld product. “You can add digital texts of your own choice, in addition to the pre-loaded content, and you can easily categorize the files.” Called the Jin Yong Reader, the device comes preloaded with the complete collection of works by Louis Cha, who is better known by his pen name Jin Yong and is renowned for his productive career in the Chinese chivalry genre. At TIBE, Koobe also demonstrated its cooperative project with local bookstores and publishers aimed at offering digital content for viewing on personal computers.

BenQ Corp., another TIBE participant and a prominent Tai­wanese manufacturer of products like televisions, digital cameras and cell phones, has also been quick to move into the e-reader sector, putting its NT$9,000 (US$280) “nReader” on the market one day before the book fair. After registering with “eBook Taiwan,” BenQ’s digital content database, nReader users can select from and download a wide collection of publications in Chinese, Japanese or English.

Meanwhile, the Taipei Book Fair Foundation also relied on other forms of digital content and multimedia to supplement and enliven the event. At the French pavilion, visitors could stop by to watch high quality animated works from the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, one of France’s most prestigious animation events.

For further immersion into France’s culture, visitors could also take in a French-language movie at the TIBE movie pavilion. For more of a local flavor, attendees could also visit that venue to watch 16 documentaries the GIO co-produced with the National Geographic and Discovery channels on subjects ranging from Taiwan’s bands to the efforts to save the Formosan black bear.

While Hall 1 of the TWTC was set aside mostly for adults during TIBE, activities in Hall 3 were intended for parents and children, with guest teachers demonstrating drawing techniques, telling stories and staging magic performances for children. Equally impressive was a section in Hall 3 displaying made-in-Taiwan stationery in a variety of trendy designs and functions. In a nostalgic contrast, Hall 3 also held a miniature exhibition focusing on traditional stationery manufacturing on the island before the personal computer and e-mail exploded in popularity.

Of course, hard-core fans of animation and comics were sure to seek out the vibrant atmosphere of Hall 2, where visitors, mostly teenagers, were often seen lining up to wait for admission to a popular booth or for autographs from comic book authors or animation voice actors. According to the Taipei Book Fair Foundation, the fans of internationally popular Japanese voice actress Rie Kugimiya began to line up one week prior to TIBE in order to be among the first to see her and get her autograph. The crowds demonstrated that like other places in Asia, Taiwan has also been struck by “Kugimiya Disease,” a term created by Japanese fans to describe their extreme fascination with the 30-year-old woman who provides the voice for their favorite animated characters.

Another activity held in the animation section was a cosplay competition, in which participants wore costumes and accessories representing specific characters. Held at TIBE for the last three years, the event was special this year because cosplayers from mainland China took part for the first time, with five top performers from Hangzhou, Zhejiang province making their debut at the comic and animation show’s opening ceremony, along with local counterparts. During the contest they donned costumes and paraphernalia representing characters from a popular mainland novel set against the historical background of ancient China.

With activities and publications capable of satisfying the varied tastes of book lovers from different age groups, TIBE appears to be on a roll. “TIBE has become the most vibrant book fair in Asia and its effort to go global and include world cultures is giving a major cultural stimulus to Taiwan,” former GIO Minister Su says. “Already held 18 times, the event has come of age. I believe it can be even stronger in the future.”

Linden Lin of the Taipei Book Fair Foundation notes that while TIBE does not currently surpass the number of visitors at book exhibitions like those in Hong Kong and Bangkok, it noses ahead of them in other areas. “I’m certain that TIBE is the most international and the most vibrant book fair in the region,” he says.

Bright Future

Lin is also confident that TIBE has a bright future ahead. The GIO played the dominant role in organizing the show from 1987 to 1996, but between then and 2004, after which the Taipei Book Fair Foundation began to organize the event, frequent changes in management sometimes left publishers unsure who they would be dealing with next. Today, however, of all the TIBE organizers, the Taipei Book Fair Foundation has organized the most iterations—six in a row—and has accumulated valuable experience in managing the event and building closer ties with international publishers.

In addition, unlike the individual publishing houses that once took on the role of organizing TIBE, the foundation is a nonprofit organization funded by a group of businesses in the sector. Funding for the event, therefore, is no longer tied to the financial strength and human resources of just one company. “We still have to bid in the competition for the right to organize the event in the future, but we should be able to continue handling the task because our mission focuses on TIBE,” Lin says. “I think the scale and influence of the book fair will definitely continue to grow.”

Write to Oscar Chung at oscar@mail.gio.gov.tw