hide and seek

The National Taiwan Museum team provided professional supervision, and Bologna Children's Book Fair illustrator Chou Chun-hsun used classical and aesthetically pleasing brushstrokes to depict a story interwoven with fantasy and reality, creating a fascinating work that combines both science and aesthetics.

This is a game of hide-and-seek that has spanned over 150 years and is still ongoing.

More than 150 years ago, Robert Swinhoe, a British consul in Taiwan who was passionate about ecological surveys and records, purchased several beautiful animal pelts adorned with cloud-like patterns. Deeply fascinated, he not only named them "Formosan clouded leopard (Leopardus brachyurus)" but also drew a lifelike image of the clouded leopard based on the fur, which has been circulated ever since. However, he never actually saw a Formosan clouded leopard with his own eyes.

A century later, a young man named Chiang Po-jen, who dreamed of finding the Formosan clouded leopard, began his "hide-and-seek" game with the clouded leopard in the Dawu mountain range. He firmly believed that this beautiful creature, which had not been sighted for decades, was merely undiscovered. He and his team repeatedly ventured deep into the mountains to set up automatic cameras, only to return empty-handed each time. Until 2013, they regrettably had to announce the highly probable extinction of the Formosan clouded leopard.

"If one day, I find you..."

This is the question that lingered in Swinhoe and Chiang Po-jen's minds, and it is also the hope in the hearts of those who still care about the Formosan clouded leopard. The National Taiwan Museum still preserves clouded leopard specimens from the Japanese era and bears the important responsibility of telling the story of the clouded leopard to the public. Therefore, the museum invited illustrator Chou Chun-hsun to create the picture book "Hide & Seek," leading readers to embark on a journey with Swinhoe and Chiang Po-jen in pursuit of the clouded leopard, and along the way, witness the ever-deepening sorrow of Taiwan's mountains and forests.

The illustrations in the picture book won an award at the 2022 Bologna Children's Book Fair.