Taiwan Travelogue marries literary criticism of Japanese colonialism in Taiwan and its complex cultural and power dynamics with subtle gay romance reminiscent of Chinese danmei novels—all under the guise of a gourmet travelogue originally written by a fictional Japanese author and translated into Chinese.
A superficial blurb: Written by Yáng Shuāngzǐ and translated by Lin King, this novel follows Japanese writer Aoyama Chizuko on a one-year research trip to Taiwan in 1938, when it was part of the Japanese empire1. When Chizuko is assigned Ō Chizuru, a young Taiwanese woman, as interpreter, she is intrigued and determined to become friends with her. As they travel Taiwan and enjoy local foods together, their evolving relationship also highlights differences they can’t seem to overcome.
There’s so much in this little book that I can’t even begin to unravel. Leanne Ogasawara has written beautifully on the complex history between Taiwan and Japan as well as the onion layers of fictional background story around the novel’s writing and publishing so I won’t go into detail about that here.
Instead, I’ll merely mention some aspects that stood out to me… with spoilers. If you’d like to discover the book for yourself, please come back after reading it.
The language used to express the political state of Taiwan as a colony: Mainland vs. Island, the euphemisms used to describe Japan’s colonising (Taiwan “was received by the empire”), how the author and translator2 chose to transliterate place and food names (Aoyama Chizuko uses the Japanese spelling for places but local foods are described by their local, mostly Taiwanese, names, and there’s even some Mandarin Chinese mixed in), Japanese as the “national language”, and many more details.
The deep and profound way in which colonisation and its effects are described, especially when Chi-chan explains how the Hoklo people coming from China also forced their culture and language on Taiwan, long before Japan did the same. I was reminded of reading on the author’s Wikipedia that she identified with the Republic of China until she participated in a protest movement as a university student, when demonstrators weren’t allowed to use the ROC flag. Her quest to understand why led to her studying Taiwanese literature and coming to identify as Taiwanese. When Chi-chan says “The absurd thing about humanity is that we only feel pain when we’re on the receiving end,” it really feels as if the author is speaking from her own feelings and experience.
The relationship between protagonist Chizuru and love interest Chi-chan see-saws between heavy with subtext and deliciously light-hearted. I saw both the coloniser husband with his colonised wife, calling her by a cute nickname, wanting to “protect” her from discrimination and buying her expensive clothes, as well as the more subtle Chinese-style gay romance dynamic, even though (or perhaps because) all they ever do is hold hands3.
The ending, too, felt like a perfect mix of mature revelation on the part of Chizuko and romantic reunion—sweet yet realistic. Chizuko accepts they can’t be together as “friends” but multiple fictional afterwords tell of a belated happy ending when Chizuru translates her novel Taiwan Travelogue into Mandarin Chinese after Chizuko’s death.
The ending highlights perfectly what I enjoyed most about this novel: the successful balancing act between genres, cultures, languages, and the two main characters, never slipping completely into cold history nor into rose-coloured romance. Just like the dishes Chi-chan prepares for Chizuko in the cottage by the Yana River, it is cooked and seasoned exactly right.
Taiwan was governed by Japan from 1895 to 1945.
There’s also an excellent Electric Literature interview with translator Lin King that goes into her process as well as Taiwan’s history.
I say Chinese-style because I don’t know if there is a genre similar to Chinese danmei in Taiwanese literature and also because it reminded me most strongly of the famous xianxia novel Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu and its live-action TV counterpart The Untamed. Whereas the novel depicts the main characters kissing and clearly hints at them being intimate with each other, any homoerotic subtext was completely erased from the Chinese-produced TV show. Taiwan Travelogue is definitely closer to the TV treatment but, knowing the author is queer, I like to think there was some heavy hinting throughout the story.