Taiwan Today

It's almost five o'clock on a Tues­day afternoon. At the three-story Comics Convenience Store, tucked in a side alley only a few minutes walk from the Taipei railway station, a few teenagers in their blue-and-white uniforms are browsing among the sta­tionery items on the ground floor. As another customer, also in school uniform, slides open the glass door, store manager Lee Chu-hua reminds her assistants to get ready for the daily rush. Although the shop opens at noon, most of the customers stop by as soon as the school day ends. Saturday is their busiest day. "The moment we open the store," Lee says, "cus­tomers start pouring in. Before long, the place is packed."

Inside is a cornucopia of cartoon­-related goods: stationery, posters, T-shirts, and other paraphernalia embel­lished with cartoon characters, cartoon videotapes, art supplies, and—of course—a huge selection of comic books. The primary and secondary school set are the store's best customers, but older kids also frequent the shop. "They start reading comics when they're in fourth grade," Lee says, "and they keep on reading them through high school and even college."

The store carries around five hundred titles, and about half are pirated Japanese comics, most of them translated into Chinese. The shop also has plenty of works by local cartoonists, a selection of kung fu comics from Hong Kong, and even a few titles from the United States. But the American comics look a bit flimsy beside their hefty Asian cousins, which are typically 150 to 200 pages long with the flat spines and paper sizes associated with paperback books rather than magazines.

Usually the store orders thirty copies of a comic book when it is first published. But a very popular one like Fatal Beauty by Taiwan cartoonist Yu Su-lan demands an initial order of over two hundred cop­ies. "They go very quickly," Lee says. "Last month was a good example. Within two weeks, we sold out."

Although the majority of the cus­tomers are young, Lee says: "Don't underestimate their consuming power. They have no hesitation about using the money their parents give them to buy up to fifty comic books at a time." That means around US$100. A pirated copy of a Japanese or Hong Kong comic book costs about two dollars; originals published locally or abroad are at least twice that. "Some customers even buy two copies of the same comic book," Lee adds. "One is for reading, the other is for their collec­tion."

The store's second-floor display area is obviously the center of the shopping action. The customers are surprisingly quiet, focusing their attention on the rows of books at hand. One of them, Wang Mei-li (not her real name), a sophomore in high school, says she is "crazy about comics." Three or four times a week, she used to take long bus rides after school to shop at different comic book stores. But she had less homework then. "This is the only store I go to now," she says. "It's near school."

Taipei has at least thirty such specialty stores, besides the thousands of magazine and book stands that carry comics. The number seems to be growing. This Cartoon Convenience Store is actu­ally a branch; its parent store in Tienmu, a northern Taipei suburb, opened two years ago. Two other branches opened a year ago down island, in Taichung and Kaohsiung. More are on the way. "Be­cause we often have customers who drive in from other cities, we want to make shopping easier for them," Lee says.

On the store's third floor is a small classroom jammed with fourteen double desks, a podium, and a movable blackboard. Here, cartoonists teach their fans to follow in their footsteps. The classes are grouped by age, from twelve years and up. For US$135, students can spend two three-hour evenings per week over two months learning how to draw cartoons. They start by tracing favorite cartoon characters before creating their own. Four class sessions have been held since the store was opened eighteen months ago, and every seat has been filled.

On the walls are samples of the stu­dents' work. Right at the head of the staircase is an original: a cross between a Japanese transformer robot and Rambo with a severe skin disorder. It's a fright­ening (and typical) motif, yet the work shows promise. The student was obvi­ously well-acquainted with the pirated comics geared for boys. Some sample ti­tles: "Wind Warrior," "Holy Killer," "Earth Devil," "Lustful Wild Wolf," and "Monster Debaucher." Most male readers prefer heavy action comics, which cover the range from traditional Chinese knight errant legends to sci-fi stories. Common to them all, both local and imported, is a level of violence that makes the old American "Blackhawks," "Terry and the Pirates," and GI Joe-style mags look like pacifist publications.

But most of the sketches are varia­tions on the popular teen-aged waif-as­-femme fatale with long disheveled hair and impossibly large limpid eyes found in comics that target young girls. Typical comic book titles of this genre are "Love You Only," "Cat Girl," "Please Come Closer and Gently," "Moonlit Fantasy," and "Lost in the Sea of Love."

Besides being good spots to meet people with similar interests, comic book specialty stores are places to check bulle­tin boards for information on cartoon clubs and the latest comic books. What about ads to sell used comic books? Although friends share their books with each other, most people do not sell them. "They like to keep them," Lee says.

Cartoons have been popular in Taiwan for four decades. According to Hung Te-lin, a car­toonist and cartoon historian, the field received a major technical boost when a number of mainland cartoonists came to Taiwan in 1949 and started doing anti-communist cartoons for newspapers and magazines.

During the fifties and sixties, comics were immensely popular with children islandwide. For example, virtually everyone over thirty today recalls growing up with the farcical adventures of Brother Ah-san and Auntie Fat, two rural bumpkins who moved to sophisticated Taipei. A typical plot has Auntie Fat creating streetside chaos with a casual re­mark or a banana peel, then marvelling at the strange ways of city folk. The comedy of errors invariably ends up with Brother Ah-san and Auntie Fat coming out on top, and unintentionally besting city sharpies.

The characters were created by Liu Hsing-chin (劉興欽). Originally an elementary school teacher, Liu became an island celebrity because of his cartoons [see FCR, March 1987]. Last year, his series of Brother Ah-san and Auntie Fat was reissued, and was warmly received. Most of the buyers were middle-aged. The fifty-five-year-old Liu says, "I guess my comic strips cause some nostalgia."

Despite the good, clean humor found in Liu's comics, many parents thought that comics were an unhealthy diversion from homework. At the time, knight er­rant comics were also extremely popular. They were packed with supernatural feats and preposterous episodes (or imagina­tive stories, depending on one's critical orientation). Many students would cut classes to hide out in small, street-side rental libraries to read them. But one student took the popular knight errant cartoon stories too seriously, and actually ran away from home to nearby mountains in search of great masters with supernatural abilities.

After the case of the lost student, media coverage and parental concern prompted government action. In 1962, the Executive Yuan approved regulations for the censorship of comic books. The regulations were implemented in 1967. From then on, all locally produced comic books had to be examined by the National Institute of Compilation and Translation before they were circulated in the market. Because of the strict—and sometimes absurd—regulations, many cartoons became blatantly didactic and bland. Or the cartoonists just quit drawing. Liu Hsing-chin recalls that the work of one cartoonist was rejected because the censors said the "bodies of the characters he created were disproportionate and unrealistic, and that would be misleading to young readers."

Despite the censorship, students still kept going to the street-side comic book shops, but the character of the market changed. Kids demanded more action than the local cartoonists were allowed to provide. Entrepreneurial shop owners therefore turned to illegally imported Japanese comics in order to satisfy de­mand. The Japanese comics did not have to satisfy the censors, and before long they were taking most of the readers away from Taiwan comics. No less disappoint­ing to local cartoonists, newspapers and magazines were reluctant to carry their cartoon strips. The field turned barren.

It was not until 1987, the year martial law was lifted, that the censorship ended. By this time, there were already a few signs of rejuvenation, at least in newspa­per comic strips. For example, the strip "Muddled Monastery," by the young cartoonist Ao Yu-hsiang (敖幼祥), brought together a group of weirdos and misfits, including two wacky Buddhist masters and their pumpkin-headed disci­ples. Set in traditional China, the strip combined light humor, Chinese kung fu, and supernatural powers in a concentrated battle against evil powers. The China Times started running "Muddled Monas­tery" in 1982, and the editors were soon convinced that local cartoonists could at­tract an audience, a large portion of them adults.

In 1984, the daily's subsidiary, the China Times Publishing Company, established a cartoon department and began publishing its first comic book monthly, Happy. It was filled with comic strips by new cartoonists. The following year, the company started an annual comic strip competition under the same name. Although Happy magazine and the compe­titions lasted only three years, they gave many of today's cartoonists their first exposure. The company tried again in 1989, this time with Sunday Monthly Comics. It lasted two years. The cause of both deaths: Japanese comics.

Even though censorship was over, the road to recovery in the comic book field is proving to be very difficult. It is lined with heavily armed and dangerous Japanese competitors such as "City Hunter," a strong, silent type who lets his weapons do the talking. The strips are full of careening BMWS, lecherous gangsters, well-endowed females, social misfits, and sexual explicitness. The boyishly hand­some City Hunter handles women the same way as his 45 Magnum, with a casually macho attitude.

Kids will always read comics and cartoons, no matter what parents say. As one high school freshman girl says, "They're much better than TV soap op­eras." But tastes have definitely changed. The old knight errant comic strips popular in the fifties may still have a hold on a small group of devotees, but today's car­toonists focus on the fast-lane present or the sci-fi future. The new generation comics also target their audience by age and sex.

Comic books aimed at young people portray characters with basically Western features, but with enormous round eyes, wild hair styles, and ultramodern clothes. Some of the Japanese comics even have special fashion sections, where the characters model different clothes. Oftentimes fashion accessories include a casually held handgun, rifle, or switchblade.

The comics geared for younger males, especially Japanese strips, are crammed with sports cars careening down narrow streets, shoot-outs with sophisti­cated automatic weaponry, and strictly male chauvinist romance, where the young beauties are slapped and patron­ized as often as they are kissed. Comics for young girls replace violence with syrupy romance. At least one passionate relationship, often frustrated or compli­cated by another female, is essential to the plot line. Longing looks, tears, sighs, and wimpy hurt smiles are standard fare.

Although the Japanese comics still attract the largest audience, at least one Taiwan cartoonist is knocking 'em dead in the market. And he's doing it with, of all things, Chinese philosophy. Since 1987, Tsai Chih-chung (蔡志忠) has been creating a series of books that recast the Chinese classics into a comics format. The first, Chuang Tzu, successfully transformed the elegant classical lan­guage and sophisticated thought of the ancient Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu (369-286 B.C.) into a quick and enjoyable read. The book has sold over 200,000 copies in Taiwan, is very popular on the mainland, and there is at least one English translation available (published in Singa­pore).

Other classics reclassified in Tsai's series include the ancient texts attributed to Confucius, Mencius, and Lao Tzu, as well as traditional poetry, novels, and short stories. They have sold over 100,000 copies each. In fact, the books sell so well that Kingstone Bookstore, which has seventeen chain stores throughout Taiwan, recently excluded comic books from its best seller list be­cause books like Chuang Tzu always came out on top.

Content determines audience, and other Taiwan cartoonists have also begun attracting loyal readerships. For instance, the witty strip by Lao Chiung (老瓊), called Tamen ("Them"), which runs in either four or eight panels, portrays hu­man relationships, especially the interac­tion between men and women. Strips about homosexuality, premarital sex, and adultery are not uncommon. "Her strip is too sophisticated for most kids," says Huang Chien-ho (黃健和), an editor at the China Times Publishing Company. "Her readers are generally adults, and female."

Other China Times comic strips, such as "Young Guns" and "The Diary of a Young Soldier" are more popular among teenagers and college students. "Young Guns," by Lin Cheng-te (林政德), describes the high school life of a good-looking boy and his rebellion against parental authority. "The Diary of a Young Soldier," by Tseng Cheng-chung (曾正忠), is actually based on fact. The comic was inspired by popular singer Chang Yu-sheng and the news that he was going to start his compulsory military service. The cartoonist actually uses Chang as his protagonist in the soldier's tale of army life. The strips first appear in newspapers or magazines belonging to the China Times publishing empire, and are then reprinted in comic book form.

Yu Su-lan (游素蘭) is beating the Japanese cartoonists at their own game. Considered the Danielle Steel of Taiwan's cartoonists, her love stories not only move young girls to tears, they show them the latest fashions. The wispy maidens are clothed in fantastically ro­mantic costumes, using meters of silk and gauze. According to the twenty-four­-year-old Yu, who started cartooning only two years ago, her fans are mostly uni­versity females. Many of them also write her "Dear Abby" letters. She laughs, "They write me about everything, their problems at home, at school, with boy­friends, and so on. One girl even asked me if I could teach her how to wear high heels."

Most of today's cartoonists are self­-taught, since until recently there were no formal classes offered in cartooning. Many of them look to Japanese cartoon­ists as role models. Yu Su-lan admits that she often imitates the drawing technique in Japanese comic strips. "But when I was creating the leading female character for Fatal Beauty, I turned to the female characters in ancient Chinese paintings."

There are still few professional cartoonists in Taiwan. China Times Publishing editor Huang estimates there are no more than twenty. "It's still too small a field for professional cartoonists," he says. "There aren't enough media willing to carry cartoons." He adds that before 1984, fewer than ten newspapers and magazines were willing to give space to cartoons. The situation improved substantially in January 1988, when the government lifted the restrictions on the number of newspapers and the number of pages they could print. Unfortunately, comic book cartoonists are faring poorly in comparison with the cartoonists doing strips for newspapers and magazines.

And success in print does not guarantee a bulging bank account. Cases like Tsai Chih-chung are rare. Redoing the classics has helped him invest handsomely in real estate, but the majority of Taiwan's cartoonists have trouble keeping steamed dumplings on the table. It is said that a moderately successful newspaper cartoonist is paid around only $100-150 for each strip. Moreover, a local cartoonist's work can be used only once. Unlike the U.S., cartoons are not syndicated in Taiwan.

Today, close to 90 percent of the comic books on the market are by cartoonists. Most appear first in Japanese newspapers. Pirating the strips became a profitable way of life for underground publishers and comic book sellers. A decade ago, most of the pirated strips were translated from Japanese books, but hi-tech has transformed the game. Today, thanks to the fax machine, an illegal printing in Taiwan can start on the same day the comic strip appears in the Japanese newspapers. By the time a collection of strips is ready to be sold in Japan, it is already available in Taiwan. Although color and paper quality is lower in the knockoffs, they are cheaper, and most are translated into Chinese.

According to Huang Chien-ho of China Times Publishing, the pirating of Japanese comic strips is highly profitable. Take Comics Express for example. The weekly publication combines seven of the most popular Japanese comic strips. Its present underground circulation is around 180,000 per week, at US$1.50 a copy. Huang estimates its publication cost per book is less than a dollar. "That means the publisher nets about US$360,000 a month, or US$4.3 million a year," he says. There are seven other similar comic weekly publications in Taiwan.

Although parents have generally be­come more open-minded about their kids reading comic books, they are up in arms about the graphic sex and violence in the underground Japanese imports. Chang Chin-li, executive secretary of the Mod­ern Women's Foundation based in Taipei, was shocked when she first opened some of the comics available in a neighborhood bookstore. "I was furious to find that they are placed shamelessly in public and within the reach of children," she says.

Chang's indignation has turned into an organized campaign to urge govern­ment action against publishing and selling such comics in Taiwan. In October 1991, the foundation conducted a revealing survey of reading patterns: a sample of 1,128 students was drawn from five jun­ior high schools in Taipei. The survey showed that 72.5 percent of the students had read pornographic and violent comic strips; 44.7 percent were male readers. Close to 35 percent of the students bought the comics from regular bookstores and stationery stores. About 23.5 percent said they borrowed from book rental shops in the neighborhood.

Publishers of local cartoonists have felt the competitive pinch. There used to be seven comic magazines in Taiwan, all dedicated to finding new cartooning talent and developing the quality of local car­toons. Only Hamburger Comics has survived, and it's in trouble. Wu Chun-lan, the comic book's publisher, has put thousands of dollars into producing each issue. She is determined to succeed, but the competition from abroad is stagger­ing. Even American comics are on the scene. Chinese versions of Garfield, Snoopy, the Ninja Turtles, and The Far Side have been brought in through legal channels and are selling moderately well.

Ironically, some Taiwan cartoonists are finding that the Japanese cartoon in­dustry treats them better. They are paid better for their work, and Japanese readers flood them with appreciative letters. Cheng Wen (鄭問) is probably the most successful. His knight errant comic strips, using traditional Chinese ink painting, is a style rarely seen in Japanese cartoons. The strips vividly describe legends about Chinese heroes. But Cheng knows his audience. In a recent interview, he mentioned that his strips for the Japanese au­dience, such as his Japanese version of Chin Shih Huang, the first emperor of the Chin dynasty, have very explicit love scenes. In the Taiwan version, the char­acters remain fully clothed, and love scenes are on1y implied in conversation.

Some Taiwan cartoons are well­-known in Hong Kong, Singapore, and mainland China. Yu Su-lan's Fatal Beauty is available in Hong Kong, and Tsai Chih-chung's classics sell very well in the mainland. Nevertheless, the car­toonists often get a raw deal. According to Kao Chung-li, former managing editor of the Sunday Monthly Comics, many of the locally done comic books are pirated by publishers in Taiwan, then sold in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the mainland.

At least Taiwan's editorial cartoon­ists are getting some respect of late. Almost all major newspapers now carry editorial cartoons. And now, the subjects are much broader and the criticism more abrasive than during the days of martial law. They comment on political, eco­nomic, and social issues. Some editorial cartoonists have even become heroes in the mind of the general public because they dare to satirize political figures and current affairs.

Lin Kuei-yu (known as Yu Fu), a regular contributor to the Independence Morning Post, was taken aback recently when he showed up at a recent political demonstration. "Many people cheered when they saw me," he says. "I couldn't believe it." He has even been asked to run for public office. According to Yu Fu, one of his goals as an editorial cartoonist is to destroy the "godlike images" of Taiwan political figures. "It's a kind of a love-hate relationship between me and them," says the thirty-one-year-old cartoonist. He adds that editorial cartooning is a new and emerging profession. Right now there are still less than a handful. Yu Fu is particularly anxious to help open up Taiwan's cartoon environment. In one attempt to jazz up the field, he has begun making dough sculptures based on the characters in his editorial cartoons.

But times have indeed changed. Even the highest-ranking political figures are no longer exempted from being carica­tured or included in cartoons. Unlike the problems associated with underground Japanese comic books, it is a healthy trend. And judging from the growing popularity of many of the new comics that focus on Taiwan society, such as "Double Big Guns" and "Wayward Lovers" by Chu Teh-yung, cartooning has a happy future.▪