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Yáng Shuāng-zǐ is a writer of fiction, essays, manga and video game scripts, and literary criticism. Her works have been translated into Japanese and French. More about this author >
Lin King is a writer and translator from Taipei, Taiwan. Her fiction has appeared in One Story, Boston Review, and Joyland, among others, and has received the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. More about this author >
Filed in the following archives
Translated from the Mandarin Chinese
From the publisher:
May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.
Soon a Taiwanese woman—who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name—is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is.
Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.
In Taiwan Travelogue, Yáng Shuāng-zi takes us on a metafictional voyage through the cuisines, customs, and landmarks of Taiwan under Japanese rule. A translation of a novel disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text, this is a sweeping tale of colonialism and impossible friendship. Lin King’s careful English rendering demonstrates the power of small choices to reveal the stories nested within official narratives and the palimpsest of influences that make up many formerly colonized nations.
