One of Taiwan's most popular comics artists

The Story of Duncan Lin“From my earliest memory, I have always liked drawing, but have never thought about making it my career,” says Duncan Lin, one of Taiwan’s most popular comics artists from Hualien. With a fanbase of 20 million and growing, Duncan has been approached by various renowned companies, such as Line, Asus, and TVBS for creative collaborations. He uses a caricature of himself as the main protagonist in his comics, which are centered around the hilarious going-ons of his daily life. With the cameras rolling, he wears his character as a mask, not wishing to expose his face. He is about 5’3, with a skinny frame, his dyed blonde hair peeking out from behind his mask. “My father always objected to my interest in drawing, but my mother was rather supportive. Some of my most precious memories are of those childhood drawings. I would show them to my mother, deeply excited, and she would look at them and say, ‘Oh, that’s [a] really nice picture’, and then display it on the fridge using a magnet. And I would feel so proud every time she did this. I would think, ‘Wow, I need to draw more, because I want more things to be displayed on the fridge’, and then slowly…. the fridge got filled up. And the old drawings would be removed, and the whole process would be repeated. And this small matter, and that fridge, they influenced me, and allowed me to feel like perhaps I should continue drawing in the future.”On the other hand, Duncan’s father was a strict figure, quite the opposite of his mother. “My father never smiled at me from the day I was born till the day he passed away. He never genuinely smiled at me and was always kind of distant - he’s a very, very strict kind of father - so we never really talked much, and of course after I graduated from high school, I left home.” Like all typical Asian parents, Duncan’s father hammered the notion: ‘do not pursue art because you’ll starve to death’, and that if he became an artist, ‘you’ll only earn money after you’re dead’.During his university years, Duncan majored in English, and he began his work life by teaching English and working at a restaurant part-time. After serving in the army, he worked at a Bed & Breakfast in Hualien. Later on, he went on to open his own street stall at a place in downtown Hualien called Tie Dao (鐵道, meaning railroad), where he would set up his own stall, selling accessories for ladies. “I think that after having dabbled in different occupations, you slowly realize that, perhaps you don’t have your career all figured out, but you will definitely realize what you don’t like to do. So through the elimination process, you can then slowly work toward finding something that will make you happy.”It wasn’t until his father fell ill that major changes were set into gear. He had been very supportive of his son starting up his own business selling women’s accessories, but a couple of months into the launched venture, Duncan’s father passed away. It was a devastating moment - although his father was a stoic man that rarely showed his affections, he was nevertheless there for his son at the moments that counted. “I remember the first few days I started the street stall business, my dad would sit on the bench beside me, worried that I would not have customers - so he always sat there for an hour or two, even after he became ill”. As his father’s health deteriorated, he was hospitalized at a facility close to their house and just a few hundred meters away from the ocean. Since his father disliked laying in his hospital bed, they would go to the parking lot by the harbor, and spend many hours there. “He always told me “hey Duncan, go grab a wheelchair; let's go out for a stroll!” Duncan recalled, “We would make small talk, but sometimes we didn’t even talk, [...] just look out at the ocean.” Father and son would sit on the bench and smoke cigarettes until dawn. “During those six to eight months of hospitalization, as I stayed by his side, we probably spoke more than the previous decades combined.”Duncan shared with us one of his most precious moments with his dad. One particular morning, after getting only an hour of sleep, Duncan was woken up by his excited father, who told him that the hospital nurses were saying that there was going to be a beautiful sunrise. Duncan propped his father onto the wheelchair and pushed him out into the parking lot. It was still dark when they sat down on their usual bench. The sky went from darkness to a gorgeous purple, and when the sunrays hit, it created a mesmerizing blend of colors in the sky. “I remember saying to my dad, ‘Oh my god, how did the nurses know? This is amazing!’” he recounted. Yet it was also a sobering moment, because he knew his father didn’t have many days left. Duncan went around the bench and took a photo of his dad. “It really was a hell of a sunrise,” the artist continued, “I asked him,