At one point in Taiwan Travelogue, its protagonist, Japanese novelist Aoyama Chizuko, jokingly declares she could eat ‘two hundred kin’ of bi-thai-bak (silver needle vermicelli). The teasing gives way to a catalogue of dishes – sushi rice, sashimi and unagi. Set in 1938 during Japanese colonial rule, Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue, translated by Lin King, follows Aoyama on a lecture and culinary tour across Taiwan, accompanied by a sharp-witted Taiwanese interpreter, who introduces her to the island one meal at a time.
Even the chapter titles are named after dishes, from sashimi to kiam-nng-ko. For culinary consultant Prachi Grover, founder of From Words to Wok, the novel offered a new way of understanding Taiwan’s history.
“I loved how the book used food to show the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised. It wasn’t just about what people ate, but which dishes survived and which quietly disappeared,” she says.
Sukanya Senapaty, social media marketer, was fascinated by how different communities prepared the same dishes differently, stating, “The story being set during Japanese colonisation added an important layer because you could feel people holding on to their traditions almost as an act of quiet resistance.” Bilingual writer and educator Shipra Pande mentions the jute soup episode, where lunch unfolds into a conversation of hierarchy. “The episode gave a lot of insight into Taiwanese culture, facts like a subordinate staff wouldn’t share a table with a senior, or how arranged marriages were a norm and women were treated as their family’s property, she says, highlighting that the relaxed talk over food was the high point of the book.
The thread runs beyond Taiwan Travelogue. Other books like Durian Sukegawa’s Sweet Bean Paste turns the slow preparation of adzuki bean paste into an act of care. Michelle Zauner’s memoir Crying in H Mart uses Korean food to preserve memories of a mother, while Hisashi Kashiwai’s The Restaurant of Lost Recipes and The Kamogawa Food Detectives revolve around meals people are desperate to taste again because they carry memories of someone they miss. Even books like Kitchen, The Lantern of Lost Memories and Before the Coffee Gets Cold turn everyday food to reveal character and routine.
Pande, who frequently reads translated fiction, notices a common thread across the region, stating, “Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Chinese translated fiction are high on food scenes. Food for them is sacred – the entire process is disciplined and religiously adhered to,” she shares. Among those books, Sweet Bean Paste remains her favourite. The novel follows Tokue, an elderly woman whose gift for making red bean paste slowly changes the life of a lonely dorayaki vendor.
Grover, too, returns to the same novel, where Tokue holds adzuki beans close to her face before cooking them, imagining the weather they had endured before reaching her kitchen, saying, “It is a small moment, but for her, it is the one that transforms cooking into an act of attention and gratitude.”
For Alwyn Sebastian, co-founder of One Too Many Books, the most memorable food scene comes from Crying in H Mart. “There was this one scene where the only language of love that the mother was capable of expressing was through food, and it is integral to how Asian mothers display their love to their children. Somehow, the children pass it through generations, and this is how recipes in India and other countries have managed to stay alive,” he opines. Senpaty had a similar experience while travelling to
Japan. Having already encountered onigiri, dorayaki and miso through novels, recognising them on restaurant menus felt familiar. “It was like the books had quietly prepared me for the trip,” she says.
In East Asian literature, food rarely exists simply to satisfy hunger. It preserves people, carries memories and reminds us that some of the deepest emotions are best expressed around a table. Pande sees this as their greatest strength. “Food experience through books and the written word has a charm of its own. It is more imaginative. I still have handwritten recipes from my mother brittle, stained yellowish paper in her handwriting. It passes on the emotion along with the food.”
The experience for Grover began at home, where she usually recreates recipes inspired by her reading. “I love making at least one dish from every book I read; it feels like the perfect way to round off the reading experience…” One that comes to her mind immediately is Yaksik from Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart.
Perhaps that is why readers continue to discover cuisines through books, even in an age of food reels and travel vlogs. A video can show how a dish is made, but a novel tells us who cooked it, who waited at the table and why that meal mattered. Like they say, food has a way of finding a place in someone’s heart. Even after a loved one is gone, the taste of a meal they once cooked can bring them rushing back, sometimes sow vividly that it leaves you smiling through tears.