Taiwan Travelogue

Recipe for TAIWAN TRAVELOGUE (serves 2):
8 cups descriptions of food (chopped, diced, mashed, sliced, julienned, cubed, stir-fried, roasted, boiled, broiled, simmered, pan-fried, let to rest, blended, churned, folded, mixed, fermented)
2 tablespoons commentary on power dynamics in colonial systems
1 dash of lesbian romantic longing

Sprinkle with meta-commentary about translation just before serving.

TAIWAN TRAVELOGUE was one of my most highly anticipated new releases this year. While it didn’t quite meet my sky-high expectations, it still offers some great food (heh) for thought in its reflections on the nuances of translation and colonialism, and its National Book Award shortlisting will hopefully bring it more to your attention.

TAIWAN TRAVELOGUE is disguised as a long-lost text written by a Japanese novelist, Aoyama Chizuko, who visits Taiwan during the years of Japanese occupation (first half of the 20th century), guided by the capable hands of her local interpreter, whom she calls Chi-chan. Aoyama, who has a ravenous appetite, is amazed by all of her new culinary experiences. However, the graceful Chi-chan, whom she has come to regard as more than a friend, seems unwilling to reciprocate her effusive declarations of affinity. Why?

I am Taiwanese, but I’m not a foodie. There are a LOT of descriptions of food, often dumped in endless pages of conversations between Aoyama and Chi-chan, that had my eyes glazing over. If you’re a more patient reader than me, you’ll probably appreciate this thorough portrait of Taiwanese cuisine more. In my opinion, though, this was a maybe-not-quite-so-successful ruse at hiding the book’s much more interesting (to me) commentary about colonialism and power dynamics.

Aoyama-san, our first-person narrator, is… a lot to take. If she sounds familiar as you’re reading, it’s because she’ll remind you of present-day tourists who swan into a place, simultaneously requesting a menu of “the local flavors” while complaining about hygiene of operating a food stall on the side of a busy road. Here is where I loved TAIWAN TRAVELOGUE and would die for it. Yang Shuang-zi wrote this nearly 100 years after Aoyama’s timeline and it’s still relevant today.

Power differences between individuals as a result of their differing countries’ relationship with one another are uncomfortable to talk about. Like Aoyama-san, many of us would prefer to pretend as if we are no different from the maid who cleans our house weekly, the local tour guide on our overseas trips, or the driver we hire for our day trips because there is no public transportation. (Side note: If you want to read more about this topic, I highly recommend Justin Farrell’s Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West.) This is why we call them our “friends” and end up feeling weird that we are expected to tip them. Friends don’t have to tip friends, right?

But we ARE different. Throughout TAIWAN TRAVELOGUE, Aoyama receives Chi-chan’s above-and-beyond service to her as if it’s her due (as another character commented, Chi-chan’s actions of cooking for Aoyama “far exceeded the responsibilities of an interpreter”). As they travel around Taiwan, Aoyama makes blithe comparisons between Mainland (Japanese) and Islander (Taiwanese) aspects, sometimes extolling the virtues of Islander flavors in an exoticizing way, other times tactlessly commenting on the ways in which the Mainland’s “investments” into the Island have made things better for the local population.

It’s cringe, but it’s also recognizable. It takes nearly 300 pages to get there, but it’s a searing depiction of colonial/imperial power dynamics like I’ve never read before.

As a bonus, the “disguise” of the book as a re-published travelogue of a deceased Japanese writer, that has been translated into Chinese, into English, back into Japanese, etc., creates an opportunity for some clever metacommentary about translation in the “afterwords.” Lin Kang, the translator, also adds her own afterword!

Overall, too many descriptions of food for my taste, but with some great themes for deep discussion.