Taiwan Travelogue

Image credit: Scribe Publications

Well, after weeks of going heavy on the cosy, fantasy reads, we have finally travelled somewhere a lot closer to home and am now reveling in the heady jetlag that comes from closing the cover on an immersive book. Cutting it a bit fine, seeing as we are meeting to discuss this tomorrow, I have just closed the cover on this month’s bookclub read: Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-zi.

It is May 1938 and Japanese woman author Aoyama Chizuko has arrived in Taiwan, invited by the colonial government to write a series of travelogue essays, even though she is personally indifferent and sometimes against their agenda. She determines to experience and devour authentic island life in every sense of the word, but fears this will be impossible with her assigned assistant/interpreter. Expressing these concerns to her hostess, she is then introduced to the charming, meticulous, and incomprehensible Chizuru, who quickly becomes her interpreter and guide. Over meals of winter melon tea, braised minced pork, silver needle vermicelli, and leftover soup, Chizuko becomes infatuated with Chizuru, but is kept at arm’s length for reasons that only become apparent after a painful separation.

Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text, Taiwan Travelogue is a gorgeous story about a beautiful relationship between two women while also being an immersive cultural exploration of history, language, power dynamics, and of course, food.  It’s an homage to the episodes of self-discovery that can occur only when you travel and stay with you for the rest of your life. I found it inspiring, engaging, and beautiful.

An accessible, academic, and yet poetic prose flavours the pages and completely envelopes the reader in the landscape as well as intimacies that come with sharing a meal. Each chapter is defined by a specific dish that accompanies a significant event in the story and the footnotes serve to cleanse the palette by breaking the narrative flow with academic flavours as well as further establishing the landscape in which we find ourselves.

Image credit: The Booker Prizes

Taiwan Travelogue is immersive and insightful and it very much has made me want to be more adventurous in the kitchen! It’s one of those books that makes you consider yourself a little more closely and from different angles, a truly beautiful and inspiring piece of fiction.

Author: Yang Shuang-zi, 2020

Translation: English translation from Mandarin by Lin King, 2024

Published: Springhill Publishing, Taiwan 2020. This edition published by Scribe Publications, ANZ, 2026.