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the complete review - fiction

Taiwan Travelogue

by
Yáng Shuāng-zǐ

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : clever and colorful -- if very food-heavy -- take

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "Taiwan Travelogue is a story of dualities. It is a labor of love by a grieving twin; a false memoir rooted in historical realities; a tale of friendship between women from different social strata and a fractured vision of an island shaped by its unique position in East Asian geopolitics. (...) In effect, Taiwan Travelogue becomes a polyphonic text that examines a Taiwanese yesteryear with the cultural affordances of the present. Yang and King together construct a time capsule, privileging the documentarian over the narrative. (...) Yang’s novel provides a portal to the past and allows the reader to explore a bygone world with their eyes, ears and stomach." - Mike Fu, The Japan Times
  
  
• "(A) delightfully slippery novel about how power shapes relationships, and what travel reveals and conceals. (...) There are multiple afterwords and many footnotes from both fictional and real translators. It all amounts to a virtuosic performance of literary polyphony. (...) The nesting doll of translations, it turns out, is also a nesting doll of empires." - Shahnaz Habib, The New York Times Book Review

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Taiwan Travelogue is a translation, from Yáng Shuāng-zǐ's 2020 Mandarin Chinese novel, but the novel itself is presented as a translation -- and not the first -- from the Japanese of a novel by Aoyama Chizuko published in 1954; in a Translator's Note, at the end of the novel (one of several), Yáng Shuāng-zǐ identifies herself as the translator of the text, rather than its author ..... (Amusingly, the Japanese translation of this novel won the Japanese Best Translation Award (日本翻訳大賞) in 2024 -- the fiction coming full circle, as it were.) This English translation, by Lin King, is presented as being from the Chinese translation of the *original* -- with King adding her own explanatory Translator's Note, as well as some footnotes (to go with the footnotes *author* Aoyama and *translator* Yáng offered ...).
       The novel is set in Taiwan in 1938 -- a Taiwan that had by then long been (since 1895) and still was under Japanese colonial rule. (More accurately, the novel-within-the-novel, which makes up the bulk of the book, is set there; beyond that, Taiwan Travelogue also includes an Introduction and an Afterword, as well and Editor's Note and several Translator's Notes which are also part of the larger fiction.) It is narrated by Aoyama Chizuko, a young author who, after the success of a film based on a novel she wrote, is invited by the Japanese Government-General of Taiwan on a lecture tour of Taiwan, and she settles in to really take in the island -- staying for a year, and regularly submitting articles to various publications for the duration of her stay. She is particularly interested in food, and eager to try (and eat) as much as possible; each of the twelve chapters of her novel is even titled by one of the foods or dishes that feature in the chapter.
       Aoyama is assigned a guide, Chizuru -- with Aoyama noting that in Japanese their names in part share the same kanji characters (千鶴). Unsurprisingly, translation and language feature prominently in the novel; Western languages play a small role, but the dominant ones are the Japanese of the colonialists, Mandarin, and the local Hokkien -- which all use Han characters; in the original Chinese version of the novel, the prominence of these same characters but different pronunciations in the different languages is more obvious, but even in the English translation readers get a good sense of it, including from, for example, Chizuru 's name -- Wáng Chiēn-hò in Mandarin, Ông Tschian-hoh in Taiwanese Hokkien (and Ō Chizuru in Japanese). Along with the constant differentiation between 'Mainlanders' (the Japanese) and 'Islanders' (the local population), the different languages persistently remind of the colonial situation in Taiwan at the time.
       Chizuru's family background is also unusual: her father is from a prominent family, but she is the daughter of one of his concubines who was born in a poor farming family and Chizuru was raised, in part, among them; nevertheless, she received a good education. She is well-read and knowledgeable.
       Aoyama wants nothing more than to indulge in food -- she is a voracious eater, and willing and eager to try practically anything, and Chizuru is an excellent guide. The relationship between Aoyama and Chizuru quickly develops into one that is more of friendship than master-servant, but their respective positions and identities remain an issue. Aoyama wants to simply look beyond these, but Chizuru remains more circumspect.
       Yáng effectively presents the tensions and complex interplay between colonizer and colonized in Taiwan Travelogue. Aoyama tries to be completely open to the local experience, trying to learn as much as possible about it -- unlike many of the Mainlanders she deals with -- but even she can not escape her identity (and privilege). Criss-crossing the Taiwan of the time, and sampling vast quantities of an enormous variety of dishes, Aoyama's tale also paints a colorful (and very taste-full) picture of Taiwan, especially in that time.
       The food-talk can be a bit much -- food-writing is not easy, and much here does not go much beyond a heaping-on-the-plate (and consuming), but it is an impressive variety of tastes and preparations that are served up. The linguistic angles are also fascinating -- elaborated then also in the fictional Afterwords and the like (as well as English translator Lin King's own Translator's Note). The whole concept of the novel, and its presentation -- as a translation (or, in the case of this English edition, a double translation), as well as a fictional rendering of Aoyama's travels (in contrast to the travel-articles she penned and published during her time in Taiwan) -- is also appealing.

- M.A.Orthofer, 8 January 2025

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Links:

• Graywolf Press publicity page
• 中央公論新社 publicity page
• Q & A with translator Lin King
• National Book Award for Translated Literature, 2024

• Dreaming in Japanese
• findingtimetowrite
• Global Literature in Libraries Initiative
• The Japan Times
• Kirkus Reviews
• Words without Borders

• See Index of Chinese literature
• See Index of Travel-related books

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About the Author:

       Taiwanese author Yáng Shuāng-zǐ (楊双子; actually: Yang Ruoci (楊若慈)) was born in 1984.

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© 2025 the complete review

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