book exhibition

I love books.. no doubt about it.. thus I won't miss the chance to visit the Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE) 2012 held earlier this month.. and boy, was I disappointed..

Student priced ticket at NT$80, instead of NT$100.. :p

TIBE Guide & Maps

The exhibition spanned over 3 different exhibition halls. Hall 1 was for books, Hall 2 for Comic/Anime/Manga and Hall 3 for Stationery and Children's Books.

It was called 'International Book Exhibition', but unfortunately, almost 98% of the books there were Chinese books.. so what kind of "International" is this??

Ground floor of Hall 1, taken from 2nd floor

Lots of works by local authors but many of them are books translated from other languages.. most of them were translated from English, and books from Japanese authors have a huge following too.. I will always read a book in its original language, especially if it is in English, thus I didn't have much interest in most of them, much less buy them..

Hall 1 was not very packed with people, especially if I were to compare it to Hall 2. The venue for all things anime/manga was crazily packed with teenagers and the not-so-young-but-equally-anime-mad. When I walked into Hall 2, I really thought that I've walked into the ground-zero of mass hysteria. Almost everyone there had that dazed look, as if they are thinking to themselves "what more can I buy??!! I need to get more!!".

look at the crowd!!

People were either queuing to get into the booths or they were crowding around some stage hoping to bid for some "limited edition" memorabilia.. many were already exhausted from all the grabbing and queuing that they just sat along the aisles, looking dead tired but ridiculously happy.. and it was barely after 1pm!!

one of the many mini stages for (comic) book signing..

one of the merchandise booths..

This was one of the many merchandise booths.. you can see how the fans were busy scanning through the catalogs and placing orders..  clearly there was some herd mentality at work..

I was rather surprised to see that the place was not monopolized by boys/guys alone.. there were lots of girls too.. still they do have different "taste", with guys going after skimpily dressed female characters and girls going for dreamy-looking male characters..

Here is a closer look at the 20-paged catalog..

Anything from towels, key chains, pillow cases, alarm clocks, mugs, life-size bolsters, note books and badges/buttons/pins can be bought.. and they don't come cheap either.. a square-sized pillow for NT$530, a button for NT$45, a mug for NT$270.. yet the steep prices do not have any effects on the fans.. I won't be exaggerating if I were to assume that these "fans" spent more than NT$2000 each that day..

Before coming to TIBE, I had allocated myself a budget of NT$1200 for books. But unfortunately, I didn't get to spend that much..

In one of the 3 booths that sells English books, I bought the first 2 books from George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire,  at a 23% discount costing me NT$486. The 3rd book that I bought was Buddhism and Ecology: The interconnection of Dharma and Deeds. It was originally written in English and was translated to Chinese. I had 2 reasons for buying this book - one is that I am more familiar with Chinese Buddhist terminology than in English. The other was that it was selling at 50% discount.. :p 

Though I didn't buy as many books as I would have liked, I didn't go back quite as empty handed..  I managed to collect, for free, some very nice/cute book marks and postcards.. and here they are..

these aren't bookmarks but name cards of illustrators/cartoonists..

I tried to take two of each so that I can keep one and use the other one.. :)

Some thoughts about TIBE:
If Taiwan wants to be (more) competitive in the global market, it has to improve its level of English.. and what better way to improve a language than to promote reading? Yet, it is very disappointing to have an international book exhibition to be dominate by Chinese books alone. If that's the case, the organizer(s) should stop misleading people by using the word "International" and just call it "Taipei Chinese Book Exhibition".