In the fourth and final volume of the graphic novel, Tsai Kun-lin looks back on an eventful life. He never quite forgave himself for the bankruptcy of his children's magazine ‘Prinz’. ‘I wasn't a hero,’ he says soberly in an interview with author Yu Pei-yun in 2018. The illustrator Zhou Jian-xin places precisely this moment at the beginning of the book, before travelling back in time. After the downfall of ‘Prince’ in 1969, the still young Tsai family has to pick itself up again in the 1970s. Kun-lin and Kimiko move into a tiny rented flat with their two children. Kun-lin takes a job as a lecturer in a training centre of a large company and pays off his debts.
Taiwan continues to modernise technologically, but it takes almost another 20 years before the martial law proclaimed by Chiang Kai-shek in 1949 ends in 1987. Tens of thousands of people were arrested, tortured or killed during four decades of dictatorship.
Tsai Kun-lin became involved in the Taiwanese democracy movement in the 1980s and began to talk about his time as a political prisoner. Taiwan's first free elections are held in 1992. The reappraisal of the ‘White Terror’ continues to this day.
A memorial and museum were set up on Lü Dao Island in the former penal colony. Until shortly before his death in 2023, Tsai Kun-lin guided visitors through the site and told them about the prison conditions and the injustice suffered by the prisoners. He tells how people supported and encouraged each other even in the darkest moments.

TSAI Kun-lin

The graphic novel «Tsai Kun-lin» comprises four volumes and almost a century of Taiwanese history. The first volume tells of Kun-lin's childhood and youth, the second volume of his long years in prison. In the third and fourth volumes, we follow the rocky road back to freedom and the successful struggle for democracy and self-determination. Tsai Kun-lin became the editor and publisher of a popular comic magazine, advocated for Taiwan's indigenous population and campaigned for democracy and human rights in Taiwan until his death at the age of 92. The years of «White Terror» under Chiang Kai-shek's military government lasted until 1992.

The author

YU Pei-yun (*1967) studied foreign languages and literature at the National Taiwan University in Taipei and did her doctorate at Ochanomizu University in Japan. Today, she teaches at the Institute of Children's Literature at Taitung National University and is involved in children's and youth literature in a variety of ways as a critic, translator and curator. In 2016, she met TSAI Kun-lin for the first time, and in conversation with him, the idea of documenting his life was formed.

The illustrator

ZHOU Jian-xin (*1973) was born in southern Taiwan. He studied printmaking at the National School of Art in Taipei, and worked as a printmaker and teacher before setting up his own business as an illustrator. In 2014, he received the Taiwan Golden Butterfly Award for Book Design for his first picture book, and other major awards for his text interpretations followed. With Tsai Kun-lin, he has designed a graphic novel for the first time.