Kissing a stranger in Paris - or 100 of them

Mar 4, 2010, 18:55 GMT

Taipei - A Taiwanese woman who kissed 100 men in Paris has published a book of photos of the events.

The book Kiss. Paris shows photos of Yang Ya-ching kissing 100 strangers in the French capital and details how she approached each man, how the man reacted to her invitation and how the kiss felt.

Yang, 28, hit upon the idea of kissing 100 strangers in Paris three years ago, but did not find the courage to do it until the summer vacation of 2009. She wanted to do something which would give her a lasting memory of Paris, where she had been studying music.

'The whole idea about this book is to have a dream and realize the dream,' she told reporters at a book signing in Taipei recently.

So during the summer vacation, she kicked off the Kiss 100 Men in Paris Project, hitting the road with a photographer to record the kisses. The colour photos show her kissing young men at various locations in Paris - in front of the Eiffle Tower, in the Concorde Square, beside the River Seine, at a subway station and so on.

Each photo show her wearing a different dress, locked in a passionate kiss with a stranger like a pair of lovers.

Many Taiwanese who bought the book admired her courage. 'I think she was very brave and it was romantic,' Li Hsin, a female university student, said.

Yang said she undertook the project not only to record her life in Paris, but also to test her courage. 'People always asked me: Were you afraid? I said no. The more afraid you are, the less things you can accomplish,' she says in the preface to her book.

After the press in Taiwan and France reported Yang's kissing project more than two million people visited her blog. Some Taiwanese have criticised Yang but her publisher, Begin Culture, defends her.

'What is attractive about Yang is not the kiss, but her courage to turn a human urge, and the romance hidden at the bottom of every girl's heart, into action,' it says in the introduction to the book.