TAIWAN TRAVELOGUE

A (fictional) Japanese writer explores the colorful and complex culinary, linguistic, and political dynamics that shaped life in 1930s Taiwan.

Originally published in Mandarin Chinese in 2021, the book is presented as a translation of a rediscovered 1954 Japanese novel by a young writer named Aoyama Chizuko. Based on the fame of a film adaptation of her novel A Record of Youth, Aoyama is invited on a lecture tour by the government-general of Taiwan and a women’s group. She lands on a busy, colorful island where “everything teemed and surged toward me under the cobalt sky.” Amidst the frenzy of “charades-like gesturing” in the process of negotiating with a marketplace fruit vendor, she is rescued by a charming young woman, who turns out to be her translator. As she and the woman, whom she nicknames Chi-chan, travel together, she finds herself drawn into an increasingly deeper friendship and begins to think that all is not as it seems. For the daughter of a concubine who was sent to live with her mother’s poor jute-farming family, Chi-chan reveals an amazing proficiency with languages; she is also well versed in popular culture and remarkably skilled at rolling dice. As Aoyama insists on probing her friend about her past, Chi-chan continues to hold back, insisting that the closeness she longs for is out of reach. Their journey together approaches its end, and Aoyama gets closer to uncovering Chi-chan’s true history, but will that bring them closer together or tear them further apart? Yáng's sharp observation blends with sensitive, sometimes subversive political meditations to create a colorful portrait of pre–World War II Taiwan.

A moving account of friendship in the shadow of the Japanese Southern Expansion policy.