Taiwan Travelogue

What a lovely book, perhaps my favorite this year. It reads like a foodie’s travelogue, but it’s layers upon layers of themes.

First off, this is a fictional travelogue written by a woman named Chizuko, who comes from Japan. Chizuko is visiting Taiwan, in 1938, as a guest of the Japanese colonial government for a lecture / promotion tour. She’s got some celebrity to her since one of her novels was adapted into a film. Her travelogue is rediscovered in 1954, translated from Japanese into Chinese in 2020, and then more recently from Chinese to English. So this is how the book is framed.

We learn that as Chizuko is in Taiwan as a guest on an official tour, she prefers to experience the real island life, taste authentic Taiwanese food, and get to know people on the island. What stood out to me was that so much of the book is framed like Chizuko is hunting for a particular dish, and then when she finally gets her hands on it she not only describes it in amazing detail, but also makes you salivate while reading her description and experience. It’s easy and fun to get lost in this while reading her travelogue.

“A Taiwanese banquet has twelve dishes. Subtracting the mid banquet small dish and the final dessert, that makes ten dishes. Every dish will inevitably have some leftover pieces on the plate, and in the past, Islander master chefs who didn’t wish to waste food would mix all of the food left on the plates into a so-called leftovers soup, which would be given to neighbors and friends after the banquet. Nowadays, it is considered a delicacy in its own right—a merging of many delicious flavors. Shina, for instance, has the famous dish fó-tiào-qiáng, literally ‘Buddha Jumps over the Wall,’ which combines all sorts of meat, fish, and vegetables including shark fin, quail eggs, scallops, and such. And leftovers soup is the Taiwanese equivalent.”

However, I mentioned layers, but those layers are cleverly interwoven and more fuzzy than the reader may think. For instance, the theme of power imbalance and colonialism is subtle because its not directly addressed, it is quietly acknowledged. Chizuko is progressive, but she represents the colonizer, able to act freely, distribute her work, have power in different situations.

Throughout the travel Chizuko is accompanied by an interpreter named Chizuru. You get a sense of their relationship and chemistry developing throughout the novel. You’re also reminded of the power dynamic between Chizuko, who represents Japan as the colonizer, and Chizuru who represents the colonized Taiwan.

“It’s brutish, isn’t it, to transplant Mainland sakura and force them upon the Island’s soil? You think so, too, don’t you?”

I really think this is a terrific book because of these magnificent layers and how it subtly delivers the message around colonization and its impact on culture, language, food, friendships, and travel. Highly recommend this book, and I think everyone will find something to relate to in this.