* 2021 Taipei Book Fair Award
* 2020 Golden Comic Award

These are tales of women making lives for themselves in the big city: commuting to office jobs, enjoying cooking for one, and wandering through the historic streets with an old friend. In the city, everyone is playing a role in their own stories, and our author depicts those ordinary yet meaningful scenes of everyday life, building up a Taipei tapestry.

Have you lived in a city? People come here for their own reasons – to stay, to study, to follow their dreams, to love, to work, to marry. Maybe you thought you’d just be passing through, but one day you realize you’ve become used to the urban bustle – and are now a part of it.

For one young woman working in the big city, Taipei is the flood of motorbikes at rush hour, tiny apartments that get more expensive by the minute, and her only source of joy: her cat. For another, it is catching up with an old friend in Dadaocheng, savoring the childhood tastes of a bowl of almond tofu, and visiting the Xiahai City God Temple to pray for a new love. For a third, there are sad times, as caring for a grandmother in hospital with cancer stirs up old memories. But what can she do, but accept the facts and make the most of what time is left?

Nine stories of women living in the city, told with only sparse dialogue, shows the reader the different lives playing out in the city, whether those are lives of leisure or of scraping by. And sometimes, when it’s too hard to make sense of, just tell yourself this is all just “For the Time Being”.

Chen Pei-Hsiu has twice been nominated for the Angoulême Young Talent award. With her realistic watercolor art and authentic young urban voice, she records vignettes of daily life on Taipei’s streets. The scenery may be unique to Taipei, but the estrangement and self-sufficiency are something familiar to anyone who has lived in a city.