About Mazu, the town, and the people.
The everyday and extraordinary things we don’t know
Welcoming Mazu in March is an important cultural phenomenon in Taiwan.
Dajia was the center of the event.
For the people of Dajia, who live in the important town of Mazu,
What kind of existence is Mazu?
What is the connection between Dajia people and Mazu?
Tens of thousands of believers flocked to Dajia.
How do the people in the small town get along with it?
The author Ballboss uses personal emotional experience.
With illustrations that blend Eastern and Western flavors,
It depicts an interesting coexistence pattern among humans, gods and small towns.
While studying in the UK, the author
This book was created after I rethought my hometown.
After four years of refinement and brewing,
This is a work full of emotion and with a new perspective.
In addition to faithfully recreating the daily life of my hometown,
It also provides readers from different cultures with some introduction to interpreting Taiwanese culture.
The most special thing is,
Mazu does not appear in a specific image throughout this book.
But you can feel her in every event,
This is the daily life of many people in Dajia.
✽ Comes with a "pilgrimage truck style collage"
Good reviews
Ah Xian is a creator with a lot of jokes hidden inside his smiling face. When you listen to him tell stories, you can’t avoid the montage coated with icing sugar. "Leaving Dajia City" is a journey that makes me want to cry, taking me back to the home that is most difficult to give up in my memory. ──Jiusi Jiaosi (famous illustrator)
Through his slightly clumsy ink painting style, he just captured the Mazu procession in a gentle way, not noisy or crowded, but with a soft and sweet perspective... -- Hong Tianxian (famous illustrator)
About the Author
Ballboss
Illustrator/theater director/interdisciplinary artist. Ballboss, who was originally a theater director, had a checkered life.
Before leaving for the UK to study animation directing with all my heart, I received a sudden notice from the school saying, "Sorry, we are changing our teaching mode to only illustration this year." I was thus forced to become an illustrator. Unexpectedly, after moving the stage onto a piece of drawing paper where nothing would move, it unexpectedly found a way out of the desperate situation. With his sense of subject matter and unique narrative techniques, he often gives the stories in his paintings a sense of humor and a sense of presence.
After returning to Taiwan, he inherited this spirit of daring to subvert the boundaries of media and established the cross-border art brand "Ballboss & Stories". With his highly creative curatorial works on local themes, he won the Ministry of Culture's annual Cultural and Creative Star Award for two consecutive years from 2016 to 2017, and was shortlisted for the Bologna Illustration Exhibition in Italy in 2019. Currently, his main output is stories, covering illustrations, theater, trendy creativity and cross-field creation.