Taiwan Travelogue

Taiwan Travelogue was an incredible, glutinous reading experience. As I mentally travelled through Taiwan alongside Aoyama and Chi-chan, I slowly started wondering what this book was actually about. And, in my opinion, it can be described, through and through, as a book about love. ❤ Not merely the love between an author and her interpreter or local guide, but a love for food, culture, history, and all the diversity within them. Taiwan becomes much more than just the setting of the story. Through Aoyama and Chi-chan’s travels, we get to experience a country with so many different layers, histories, and traditions. And food plays a huge part in this. (I don’t recall ever reading a book that described food in such a delicious way. There were so many moments when I could almost taste what Aoyama and Chi-chan were eating.) But when talking about Taiwan Travelogue, one cannot forget the amazing translation by King. It isn’t merely a translation on a basic linguistic level, but rather a reminder of how important real translation work is, especially nowadays. King narrates us through the novel and allows us to experience the story as an intercultural journey. She manages to make the book feel natural in English while still preserving the cultural differences and particularities that make the story what it is. In a way, the translation itself becomes another layer of the journey. I am encountering Taiwan through Aoyama’s eyes, but I am also encountering Aoyama and Taiwan through King’s interpretation of Yang Shuang-zi’s original text. There is something quite beautiful about that, because it makes you aware of how much of our understanding of another culture is shaped by the people who help carry those stories across languages. It definitely made me want to know more about Taiwan, but it also made me think about what it means to encounter another culture through someone else’s eyes. And perhaps that is what Taiwan Travelogue was ultimately about: love as a way of paying attention to food, to people, to places, to history, and to the stories that connect all of them.