Librairie Le Pigeonnier
Lin’s former employer, Françoise Zylberberg (1944–2010), came from France and founded Taiwan’s first and only generalist francophone bookshop: Librairie Le Pigeonnier.
Zylberberg began her enterprise by selling postcards. Now situated in a lane off Taipei’s Songjiang Road, her bookshop continues to display on a spinner rack vintage postcards cut into various shapes that epitomize Taiwanese culture, such as clogs, firecrackers, the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, and sesame-seed cakes with deep-fried dough sticks. They bring a smile to visitors’ faces.
These ingenious creations remind us of Zylberberg’s roots in a country steeped in art. Prior to coming to Taiwan, Zylberberg had taught French as a foreign language at the University of Paris VII. In 1979 a teacher exchange program brought her to Taipei, where she taught French at National Taiwan University. In an age not yet blessed with advanced telecommunications technology, she wanted to send postcards to her family in France, only to discover that there wasn’t a lot of choice in local shops. This was why, in 1989, she started selling her own Pigeon Postcards.
Amélie Sun, who has worked at Librairie Le Pigeonnier for more than 25 years, takes us on a trip down memory lane, describing the different incarnations of the bookshop. If Pigeon Postcards marked the beginning, the business took on something of its present shape as a kiosk selling art books and gifts at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. In 1999 Zylberberg expanded Le Pigeonnier to better serve Taiwan’s francophone community. She commissioned her partner, fashion designer Sophie Hong, to design the interior, turning it into the generalist bookshop we know today.
Entering the shop, we find ourselves embraced by a graceful, unpretentious space, with rows of shelves packed full of upwards of 10,000 books, arranged according to their content. In the early days of Le Pigeonnier, Taiwan wasn’t a popular tourist destination and locals rarely traveled overseas; the flow of information was also relatively limited. The shop served as a vital hub for Taiwan-based French speakers from countries such as France, Belgium, Canada, and Haiti, who found here a linguistic comfort zone where they could gather the information they needed. For Taiwanese readers, the shop has been like a secret garden where they can acquire an intimate knowledge of France.
Le Pigeonnier’s achievements were recognized by the French government in 2013, when it joined some 200 other bookshops across the world accredited by the Centre National du Livre as “librairies francophones de référence.” It remains the only bookshop in Taiwan that has received this honor.
Françoise Zylberberg (left), founder of Librairie Le Pigeonnier. (courtesy of Librairie Le Pigeonnier)
With the help of Le Pigeonnier, in 2006 the French pavilion at the Taipei International Book Exhibition featured a display of precious photographs of Taiwan taken by John Thomson when he toured the island with the Scottish missionary James Laidlaw Maxwell in 1871. (courtesy of Librairie Le Pigeonnier)
Librairie Le Pigeonnier houses more than 10,000 books. It is one of the few generalist bookshops in Taiwan that stock French-language titles.