In the early years of Yáng Shuāng-zǐ Taiwan travel bookat Narrator on a late night train Watching her fellow travelers engrossed in books. When she asked about it The woman stopped when she was interrupted. “Her soul,” the speaker observes. “It seems to go back into your body.” A good book can steal your soul for a short while. and replace it with its own book.
But some books make you fight for that privilege. Taiwan travel book It is one novel about love. Colonialism, War, and Food, translated from Mandarin by Lin King, won the National Book Award for Translated Literature this week. Created with the aim of making its spirit difficult to find. The book is framed as a new Mandarin translation of the 1954 Japanese autobiographical novel by author Aoyama Chizuko, which itself is based on a collection of her earlier travel columns. (Shizuko is made up. The original Mandarin version of Taiwan travel book spark conflict It lists her as the author and Yáng as the translator), supplemented with footnotes by Yáng as well as notes by Chizuko and various (character) scholars.
These layers of commentary serve to make the emotional center of the story more difficult to reach. And it’s even more fulfilling when you get it. The novel follows Chizuko as she spends a year in Japanese colonized Taiwan starting in 1938 while participating in a lecture tour organized by the colonial government. She wrote her travels in an attempt to understand something of the true nature of her host country. She tries to learn the true nature of the interpreter who serves as her guide. who was a young Taiwanese woman who received the name Ō Chizuru under the colonial government.
since the beginning Chizuru casts a spell on Shizuko. (The novel parodies the similarity of their names.) She is gentle but strong. Warm but reserved Full of surprising knowledge and interest. and is very skilled at hiding her feelings. Chizuko’s feelings for Chizuru remain deliberately vague. She calls them friendship. But it looks like romantic love. came to dominate her time in Taiwan She is a blunt woman. Who wants two things frankly. That is the discovery of the origin of “The resilience and vitality that flows through this formidable colony” and getting closer to Chizuru
Shizuko’s tool of choice in both investigations is food. She was in her mid-20s, just a few years older than her guide. and is already a famous author She is obsessed with eating. Her family teases her that she has a monster’s appetite. When she came to Taiwan She was determined to find a way to eat all the way to the center of the island. She doesn’t mind wasting time on the traditional Japanese food usually eaten by the visit. “mainland”, a term used throughout the novel to refer to the colonists Instead, he became interested in the island’s food. From the richest delicacy to the simplest stew. And between these meals She tries to find her mysterious translator and build a real relationship.
In trying to understand both the island and the interpreter Shizuko found only partial success. But her tasteful pursuit of intimacy still provides insight. In most cases, it is the taste that determines the essence of a person. Among all the senses This is done in part by tying them to the time and place in which they lived.
But when your homeland has been under foreign control for centuries? Your tastes are inevitably shaped by that reality—by the culinary traditions that colonists brought with them. and by attempting to preserve the original flavor in the face of erasure. Shizuko views Taiwan as being controlled by various rulers. Including the Dutch The Qing Dynasty of China and Japan as wonderland that needs conservation. before being overcome by forced assimilation and modernity. Chizuru gently points out that colonialism has turned Taiwan’s indigenous culture into a historical relic. “How far back should one go when lamenting such atrocities?” she asked.
Shizuko was proudly opposed to Japanese imperialism. She insists on eating everything that represents “real” Taiwan, right down to soup made from hemp leaves. which is traditionally food for the poor To which Chizuru bluntly calls it “bad taste”, but it turns out Shizuko is adventurous as long as she feels safe in her own skin. At the end of the novel She was forced to look clearly at how much her privilege as a mainlander made her oblivious to the experiences of others. And how easily the frankness she values in herself can come across as coercive? When your sense of self is painfully disturbed So she turned to home food. and quickly lost interest in Taiwan’s surprisingly fresh food. “I only eat nekomanma rice,” a dish Yáng’s footnotes describe as “A simple Japanese household meal,” which is “rice with eggs or white bread with butter and sugar,” she wrote.
There is an additional, complicated story behind Shizuko’s travel books that became novels. Her first columns about Taiwan were written in 1938 and 1939, on the eve of World War II. When she revisited this material in the early 1950s to write Taiwan travel bookIt was her own country that was occupied by the victorious Allied forces led by the United States. The end of the war meant the end of Japanese rule in Taiwan. This is the divide that seems to be fueling the divide. For Shizuko A sense of personal loss: Her connection to the island she had temporarily considered a second home was severed. It is easy to imagine the harsh experiences of life under another country’s occupation. It forces her to relive a time when she herself represented the colonial power without truly understanding her complicity.
Yáng has structured her novel like A mother with many children Doll: A straightforward story surrounded by many twisting layers of mystery. The deepest mystery is Chizuru, who is an expert at getting to the essence of things. She always shows it in peeling or peeling the food she offers Chizuru. Roasted seeds known as kue-tiPeanut, Broad Bean, Lychee, Sweet Potato: She always exudes a sharp, strong, and meticulous appearance. So that Shizuko can enjoy the sweets inside. As the pair traveled and ate all over Taiwan, with Chizuru constantly peeling, peeling, peeling. Shizuko also tried to dig up some of her own. To guess who this calm and charming woman is?
Ultimately, Shizuko cannot fully get to know her elusive friend without learning the truth about herself first. Chizuru finally helps her see. That truth: Power—even when used inadvertently—hides. This leaves people with a lesser understanding of the world around them. There’s a reason Chizuko always tries to extract the delicacy from the shell. She writes, “Even with fingers and teeth, But I could hardly pull out the lychee seeds,” she wrote, as Chizuru made the task look effortless. Only one person had to learn the art of delicacy. which is a tool of the powerless
Taiwan is currently under self-government. But most countries are not recognized as independent. In the days before the American presidential election, China, which in recent years has significantly increased its threats against the island; recommend that Donald Trump will turn his back on Taiwan’s defense if he returns to office; A reminder of Taiwan’s instability which is constantly sensitive to the intentions of the superpowers investing in Taiwan Helps increase attraction. Taiwan travel book– within Yáng’s difficult assessment of her well-meaning and fundamentally likable narrator. That is a plea for those in power to reflect. And it is a reminder of what is at stake when that responsibility is neglected.
In one quiet storytelling scene Chizuru takes Shizuko to harvest hemp plants so they can make the terrible soup she promised. It was a far more complicated endeavor than Chizuko had ever imagined: “As an experienced jute picker can quickly discern the soft, usable leaves, But a beginner need not be able to tell the difference even if he touches them,” she writes. The soul of a country or a person is a gentle thing hidden in the hardened tissue surrounding it. It is easy to destroy it in the process of discovering it. Simple and brutal
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