When Chinese writer Lin Yutang wrote in The Importance of Living, “What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?”, he was speaking not only of memory, but of the intimate bond between food, homeland, and the self. International Booker winner Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-Zi, translated by Lin King and the first work translated from Mandarin Chinese to win the prize, moves along a similar path. Through the relationship between two women, Aoyama Chizuko and Chizuru, in colonised Taiwan in the 1930s, the novel explores how imperialism reshapes human reality. Its protagonist, Chizuko, a novelist invited by the Japanese government to Taiwan to document the land and lecture on South Asian kingdoms, becomes a lens through which Shuang-Zi examines society under colonial rule. With lucid language and sharp social insight, the novel reimagines a classic narrative of power, identity, and belonging.
Even as food remains the novel’s central motif, Shuang-Zi also examines Taiwan through the bodies of her characters. Their gestures, sensations, and physical responses become vessels of emotion. The language, here, is at once political and sensual. “My gut somersaulted to my chest. The corners of my mouth couldn’t help but curl in glee”, says Chizuko. Throughout the novel, bodily sensations reveal emotional shifts, changing intimacies, desire and perception. This becomes evident again when Chizuko says, “As I stood homebound on the deck, the salt-laced sea breeze brought no chill to my skin.”
The narrative unfolds through the cuisines of Taiwan as it traces love, identity, and belonging. Through Chizuko and her guide Chizuru, the writer explores how food is capable of shaping a community’s imagination and, in difficult times, can become a bridge between desire and survival. Chizuko’s urge to taste dishes denied to outsiders feels revolutionary, as she refuses to restrain her hunger for Taiwan and its people, consciously and sometimes unconsciously.
When Chizuko asks, “Mishima-san [Chizuru], you really have no intention of any Islander food, do you?”, we are exposed to the fragile divide between insiders and outsiders, their ego, humility, and hypocrisy. Language, too, carries the weight of the history of Taiwan before and after the Japanese invasion, while also revealing the islanders’ fear of losing themselves. Chizuru’s remark, “We are all children of the Heavenly sovereign,” reflects both submission and resistance.
From Megasthenes to Ibn Battuta, travelers were often welcomed by Japanese royal courts so that empires could travel farther through their words. Shuang-Zi reworks this history in the novel and exposes the politics behind the empire’s invitation to Chizuko. Hospitality here is not innocent; it becomes a tool of power and expansion. Yet, Chizuko’s refusal to fully become a part of this agenda gives the novel its strength. In a world where governments increasingly use intellectual spaces and even AI to circulate hatred and violence, Chizuko’s resistance feels deeply urgent. She questions the empire’s intentions and asks, “Were they not, in essence, brute acts of erasing the distinctions of individual cultures?” The novel’s love, therefore, is not limited to Chizuko and her Taiwanese lover alone. It also expands to her love for Taiwan, its culture, memory, and people.
Hospitality from the Japenese empire is not innocent; it is a tool of expansion. Yet, the protagonist’s refusal to fully become a part of this agenda gives the novel its strength
Shuang-Zi reminds us that “art and politics cannot be kept separate.” The same spirit runs through Chizuko as she criticises both the Taiwanese islanders and the mainlander Japanese who thrive outside the island. Through her, the novel exposes how both communities impose their prejudices and limitations upon women. Chizuko understands that the same government that invited her can also imprison her. This becomes clear when she stands beside her interpreter, guide, and lover Chizuru, who is shamed for selling the bitter drink mua-inn-thng. Chizuko resists this cruelty by asking, “Why would they say that you grew up on mua-inn-thng?” The question tears apart the logic of social conditioning and the shame forced upon women.
Taiwan Travelogue offers a comprehensive insight into Taiwan, though its narrative of food and documentation of places through layered metaphors can sometimes burden the reader. The queer love between the protagonist and her lovers arrives like a warm breeze in the early sections of the novel, but while pursuing its larger political and cultural objectives, the narrative occasionally struggles to balance intimacy with commentary. The novel also attempts to preserve a significant history, yet at times the descriptions of places and cuisines overshadow the book’s underlying dissent. Still the novel reminds us of the need for voices that remain clear about the kind of world we should inhabit, and Shuang-Zi unsettles the reader within this tender space of love, memory, and food. Lin King’s translation is simple yet graceful, with remarkable clarity and warmth.