“Ah, Taiwan!” There is a yearning quality to Taiwan Travelogue that hints at the writer and protagonist Aoyama Chizuko’s proclivity for romance but also the ineffable complexity of summing up a place and a people, a complexity that is deepened by the book’s own mythological publication history. Taiwan Travelogue would have readers believe that it was originally published in Japan in Shōwa Year 29 (1954) as a fictionalized account of the Japanese writer Aoyama Chizuko’s travels in Taiwan fifteen years prior, and of the companionship she shared with her translator and guide, Ông Tshian-hȯh. In reality, Aoyama Chizuko is but a character; the novel was originally published in 2020 by twin sisters Yáng Ruò-hūi and the late Yáng Ruò-cí, under the shared pen name Yáng Shuāng-zĭ. Though it originally credited Aoyama Chizuko as the Japanese author responsible for the account with Yáng listed as a translator, after much public backlash in Taiwan, largely in response to the fabricated translator’s notes and footnotes, a second edition of the book was later issued, correctly indicating Yang as the author.

Translator Lin King carefully brings Yáng Shuāng-zĭ’s Mandarin into English, confronting linguistic challenges that had previously been avoided. Whereas Yáng utilized the script shared by Japanese, Chinese, and Taiwanese Hokkien, King has painstakingly differentiated between the different romanizations of those languages, largely preserving the Japanese colonial pronunciations that would have been used by Chizuko during her travels while incorporating Mandarin and Hokkien where appropriate. In doing so, King made the unusual decision to include diacritics in the text, a choice that is critical in preserving the pronunciation and accompanying meaning of the non-English words. King adds her own footnotes alongside those attributed to Yáng and Chizuko, adding another layer to what she describes in her translator’s note as the “onion of story premises.”

It is somewhat serendipitous that Taiwan Travelogue was written by twins, since literary foils and ideas of duality pervade the novel. Chizuko seems to be naturally drawn to twos—the twin dragons of the Hatto waterfall, the nearly identical tastes of the Island’s tshùn-tsó and the Mainland’s karintō (sugar-dusted sticks of fried dough), or the two pairs of high school students that she clings to as models of friendship. As a visitor from the Mainland—as Japan is referred to throughout the novel, in light of Taiwan (or “the Island”) being a Japanese colony at the time—Chizuko often accompanies descriptions with their Japanese counterparts: “Sakura for the Mainland, khóo-līng-á for the Island.”

There are echoes between the Chizuko and her guide as well. Tshian-hȯh, a former schoolteacher of Taiwanese birth who is engaged as Chizuko’s translator and guide, serves as Chizuko’s Taiwanese counterpart. Their similarities, such as their age, their literary ambitions, the perceived limits imposed by their womanhood, and their enthusiasm for food, emphasize the ways in which their different social statuses fate them to unequal opportunities. Chizuko sees much of herself in Tshian-hȯh but also suspects that the latter is in many ways superior, nearly omnipotent in her talents but stifled by her origins as a concubine’s daughter. These discrepancies are starkest in the contrast between Tshian-hȯh and the translator originally assigned to Chizuko—an Island-born city official named Mishima. Whereas Tshian-hȯh is enraptured by Chizuko and flirts with the division between friend and employee, Mishima steadfastly holds on to professional boundaries, refusing to indulge any requests that do not directly relate to his assignment—even those as seemingly simple as Chizuko’s desire to taste pineapple juice.

It is impossible to discuss Taiwan Travelogue without acknowledging the ubiquitous presence of food. As is the case for many travelers today, Chizuko is driven by a desire for the exotic; she is fascinated by what is alien to her, frequently referencing classical Chinese poetry and philosophy to narrate her experiences on the Island and describing the foods that she samples as treasures “more dazzling to me than any jewelry box” and her appetite as “monstrous.” She also introduces moments of brevity through food: “Chi-chan came armed with pork and answers.” The novel launches right at its start into vivid descriptions of food stalls—“Blood-red meat carved into strips, hanging from hooks like flesh tapestries”—and Chizuko continues to eat endlessly, with food appearing on more pages than not. Hungry readers may find that Clarissa Wei’s Made in Taiwan: Recipes and Stories from the Island Nation, which offers both recipes and further cultural and historical insight into Taiwanese food, is a worthwhile companion read (bí-thai-bȧk rice noodle soup, bah-sò-pn̄g braised minced pork belly rice, and tshài-póo preserved radish are among the dishes featured in both).

In the context of Chizuko’s year in Taiwan, food serves to mark passing seasons, in a manner reminiscent of Nina Mingya Powles’s Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai. In both books, chapter titles are named after different dishes, each of which nearly attains the stature of a character in that chapter. Food is used to illustrate the deepening intimacy between Chizuko and Tshian-hȯh, too, with seemingly small acts—the women eating separately at first and then together, cooking for one another or passing each other choice morsels—becoming significant. Food also figures as a proxy for Chizuko’s emotions; when she senses that Tshian-hȯh is upset with her but is unable to determine why, she writes: “Uncharacteristically, I ate the whole meal without tasting the food.”

Chizuko’s descriptions of food contain lush imagery as well as a pedagogical fervor that suggests an eagerness to capture Taiwanese food culture accurately and to pass on that knowledge. This obsession with accuracy and documentation may indicate a preoccupation with the same notions of authenticity that have cropped up in recent times. “And why bother traveling at all if one only plans on eating jōgashi?” she asks, referring to the Japanese terms “jōgashi” (literally, “upper/superior snack”) and affordable “dagashi” (literally, “lower/trivial snack”) which, translators Yáng helpfully point out, share a relationship “not unlike the dichotomy between upper and working classes.”

Food becomes, then, a record of both colonization and social division. For Tshian-hȯh, this notion that food reflects economic circumstances is a fact—she notes, “Every family has its own bah-sò recipe depending on their financial means and dining habits.” Chizuko is emphatic that such origins do not make it any less elaborate: “It might be called ‘poor people’s food’ . . . but the number of steps it takes to make muȃ-ínn-thng is no less involved than a banquet dish!” she proclaims, speaking of a jute-leaves soup that was a staple of Tshian-hȯh’s childhood. The willful desire to look beyond a food’s origins and assess only the end product is a form of romanticization that characterizes Chizuko’s overall understanding of the impact of Japanese colonization on Taiwan, a view that is criticized by Tshian-hȯh and Mishima to varying degrees. Whereas Tshian-hȯh largely masks her opinions, preferring to withdraw from her relationship with Chizuko rather than explain her discomfort, Mishima is straightforward:

. . . the way in which you talk about the Island’s flavors does not sound to me like you are appreciating them for being delicious, but more for being exotic, as one might appreciate a rare animal. It is only natural for Aoyama-sensei to pay attention to the things that rouse your interest and are novel to you, but then to claim that your personal preferences are proof of some greater trend seems to me forced and, pardon my frankness, a sign of intellectual arrogance.

Perhaps as historically divisive as the idea of authenticity, when it comes to food, is the question of whether or not food is political. Taiwan Travelogue makes it clear that food and politics are inextricably intertwined, whether because of legislation permitting only the sales of bentos with patriotic symbolism at train stations, the globalization and evolution of variations of curry, or the stratification of food itself.

Through food, and the act of writing about it, Chizuko grasps at deeper questions: What are the responsibilities of travelers? What are the responsibilities of writers? What defines a friendship? These questions act as a mirror, compelling her to consider her own identity as a colonizer visiting a colony, as a writer tasked to write in an inherently political environment, and as a young woman seeking a remedy for her loneliness. When she first arrives in Taiwan, Chizuko enthusiastically declares that

Traveling is living in a foreign place. As in, experiencing all four seasons of normal life in a foreign place. Leaving behind a home environment where one’s habits have settled into old, tired ways and spending one’s days somewhere else, trying to find some new feeling in the mere act of being alive in this world. In this sense, traveling is a way of cleansing one’s body and mind—starting afresh.

This sentiment is echoed verbatim near the novel’s end, at which point it no longer feels inspirational but rather naive and self-serving. Chizuko resents the idea of involving herself in politics (“The idea of using my pen as a weapon for war—ha!”) and yet she comes to realize that her presence as a Mainlander in the colony makes her part of the very system that she resents.

Taiwan Travelogue is a fearless record of a complicated time in Taiwan’s history. It not only captures the physical details of the period of Japanese colonization—“leather oxfords and wooden geta,” majolica tiles, and an overall merging of Chinese, Japanese, Indigenous, and Western cultures—but also the difficult social experiences of the people who lived through it. Early on, Chizuko notes the subtle differences between Mainlanders in Japan, those born on the Island, and the Islanders themselves, but this early awareness is superficial, acknowledging only cultural differences rather than social prejudices or forms of legalized discrimination. It is only through her relationship with Tshian-hȯh that Aoyama Chizuko is able to gain any insight into the true experiences of the colonized or any understanding of her own complicity. Taiwan Travelogue reads thereafter as an apology, a reckoning with the political climate, but also a longing account of a friendship that could not overcome social differences. Even knowing that the book is pure fabrication and not the translated autofiction that Yang originally presented, there is a meaty satisfaction in knowing that Aoyama Chizuko and Ông Tshian-hȯh, though never physically reunited in life, are forever bound together within these pages: a fleeting moment in history, if not in their memories, preserved.

Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ, translated from the Mandarin Chinese by Lin King (Graywolf Press, 2024)

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