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[REVIEW] “The Colonial Gaze at the Dinner Table: Yáng Shuāng-zǐ’s Taiwan Travelogue” by Jennifer Eagleton

Yáng Shuāng-zǐ (author), Lin King (translator). Taiwan Travelogue, Graywolf Press, 2024. 320 pgs.

Taiwan Travelogue, winner of the International Booker Prize 2026, follows the fictional celebrated Japanese writer Aoyama Chizuko and her Taiwanese interpreter Chi-chan on a culinary tour of 1930s Taiwan. The developing affection between the two women is constantly shadowed by the political hierarchy of the Japanese empire; the coloniser holds unquestioned institutional power, while the Taiwanese people are relegated to inferior status.

Choices are always made about what to translate, what to discuss, what to omit, and how accurately to render it.

The book is presented as a translation of a rediscovered fictional Japanese memoir from 1938. Through an experimental, onion-like structure incorporating false archival documents, footnotes, and several afterwords, the author compels the reader to recognise that language, history, and translation are never neutral: choices are always made about what to translate, what to discuss, what to omit, and how accurately to render it.

The book is structured so that each of its twelve chapters is named after a specific Taiwanese dish or ingredient, such as roasted seeds, jute soup, or silver needle vermicelli. While “a dining table can hold the multitudes of oceans and continents” when experienced, food also becomes a structural metaphor for the “colonial gaze”: the act of consuming, exoticising, and fundamentally misunderstanding a colonised culture when one travels through it. We do this too when we travel, comparing and contrasting our own practices against those of others.

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Her relentless pursuit of street food treats Taiwan as a “living museum”.

The colonial gaze plays out through food in several ways. Aoyama Chizuko calls herself a “monster” because of her prodigious appetite. She repeatedly rejects the official imperial banquets arranged by the Japanese colonial authorities, insisting that she wishes to taste the “real” and “authentic” Taiwan. Her relentless pursuit of street food treats Taiwan as a “living museum”. She fails to recognise that her freedom to roam the island, “consuming” its culture at will, is itself a privilege afforded by her status as an imperial citizen. In one episode, when her Taiwanese interpreter Chi-chan is publicly humiliated and dismissed by imperial school officials, Aoyama’s response is to dismiss the tension by declaring, “You know what the best cure for anger is? Food!” She prefers a “delicious” Taiwan to a politically complex one, only rarely discussing the injustices of Japanese rule during her journey.

Aoyama Chizuko frequently evaluates Taiwanese food through the lens of Japanese “refinement”. When local ingredients are incorporated into Japanese-style dishes, this is framed as a form of modernisation. Aoyama Chizuko relies entirely on Chi-chan to locate and explain the local delicacies to her.

The most direct confrontation between coloniser and colonised in the novel takes place over a dining table.

The most direct confrontation between coloniser and colonised in the novel takes place over a dining table. Aoyama Chizuko wishes to cross cultural lines and treat Chi-chan as an intimate friend by sharing meals. Chi-chan, acutely aware of the colonial hierarchy, fiercely resists dining alone with her, stating bluntly: “I am unwilling to dine at the same table with you as an inferior. People should eat at the same table only if they are of equal rank.”

The dishes served in the novel are also significant to the plot. Aoyama Chizuko views jute soup as a fascinating, exotic, rustic treat, but for Chi-chan the soup carries the sting of poverty; her wealthy relatives mock her by saying she “grew up on jute soup”, marking it as poor people’s food. By highlighting this dish, Yáng Shuāng-zǐ showcases a distinct Taiwanese culinary culture that survived in spite of empire, transforming what was made do with into local heritage. The novel rewards rereading, as further inferences may be drawn from the various dishes headlining each chapter.

By framing the history of occupation through mouth-watering food diary entries, the reader is lured into sharing Aoyama Chizuko’s romantic and “hungry” attitude towards Taiwanese cuisine, only for the bitter reality of systemic inequality to be slowly revealed as the narrative unfolds. Beyond its meditation on the colonial gaze, the novel also offers the simple pleasure of expanding one’s knowledge of Taiwanese cuisine.

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Then there is the deepening personal relationship between Aoyama Chizuko and Chi-chan, which plays out through a shifting dynamic of desire, misunderstanding, and resistance. From Chizuko’s perspective, her affection for Chi-chan is pure, romantic, and deeply progressive. She views Chi-chan as an exceptional, highly educated woman and a kindred artistic spirit, yet fails to recognise the imbalance of power between them. Aoyama Chizuko expects emotional intimacy and vulnerability from Chi-chan while remaining entirely blind to her own institutional privilege, a blindness the reader finds acutely frustrating, since we can see what she cannot. Chizuko treats Chi-chan as a guide to an “authentic” Taiwan, effectively mythologising both the island and the woman translating it for her. It was this that initially frustrated me as a reader: how could Aoyama Chizuko fail to recognise how condescending she so often sounded?

The pair frequently occupy a train compartment, in which the outside world is reduced to blurred scenery. Aoyama Chizuko marvels at the efficiency and romantic views of the scenic train rides, praising them as proof of Japanese “modernisation”, whereas Chi-chan, looking out of the same window, sees the human cost of building those tracks.

In the enclosed, moving space of the train carriage, the two women are forced into prolonged, face-to-face proximity. This physical confinement enforces a kind of domestic closeness: sharing bento boxes and exchanging casual conversation. Here, Aoyama Chizuko feels free to press Chi-chan for deeper personal revelations. On the train, they mimic a couple on holiday, navigating food stalls and scenic views side by side, and Aoyama Chizuko indulges in the fantasy that they are simply two independent women travelling the world together.

Chi-chan’s feelings for Chizuko are deeply repressed and complicated by her status as a subject of imperial Japan. She is genuinely drawn to Chizuko’s intellect and freedom, yet she constantly maintains an emotional distance, rejecting Chizuko’s attempts to flatten their societal differences. When Chizuko wishes to share a bed or eat as equals, Chi-chan insists upon professional boundaries. She must constantly translate not only words but also carefully curate Taiwan to meet Chizuko’s expectations; she can never truly let her guard down.

Aoyama Chizuko recognises when Chi-chan is wearing her “Noh mask” in response to something she wants or needs from her. This mask serves as a central psychological motif that perfectly encapsulates the emotional armour Chi-chan must wear to survive her journey with Aoyama Chizuko. A traditional Japanese Noh mask is rigid and carved to appear blank, though subtle movements can suggest emotion; Chi-chan likewise adopts a perfectly polite, unreadable, and deferential demeanour, the human equivalent of such a mask. Because Aoyama Chizuko is constantly pressing for deeper emotional intimacy, the Noh mask becomes Chi-chan’s primary means of romantic rejection.

Just as a real Noh mask can suddenly appear sorrowful or enraged depending on how the actor tilts it, Chi-chan’s mask occasionally slips. Yáng Shuāng-zǐ notes subtle cracks in Chi-chan’s composure: a sudden silence, a fleeting look of exhaustion while gazing out of a train window, or a rigid posture during a tense meal. These moments offer the only glimpses, for both the reader and Chizuko, of the immense psychological toll of her daily survival.

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The breaking point of the novel occurs during a winter excursion to the hot springs, where the rising romantic tension and structural inequality finally collide. Aoyama Chizuko, driven by her escalating infatuation, attempts to strip away the boundaries between them, both physically and socially, through increasingly grand and patronising gestures. She offers to buy Chi-chan a Japanese kimono, invites her to move into her cottage, and ultimately begs her to break off her arranged marriage and elope to Kyushu, Japan. To the writer, this is a progressive, romantic rescue mission; to Chi-chan, it is the ultimate imperial encroachment. It is here that Chi-chan’s polite, professional Noh mask finally shatters, resulting in a devastating confrontation.

When Aoyama Chizuko is left entirely devastated, the shattering of the mask reveals the tragic reality of Chi-chan’s inner feelings. Chi-chan does not maintain her distance because she hates Aoyama Chizuko, but because she knows that a fair relationship between them is structurally impossible. In a heartbreaking moment of vulnerability, Chi-chan admits that Aoyama is the only person who has ever truly treasured her, yet in the same breath she fiercely refuses her friendship and insists that they maintain a strictly cold, professional relationship.

The novel offers a telling culinary metaphor during a brief, melancholy reconciliation. The pair visit a legendary Taiwanese chef, who serves them a spectacular twelve-dish banquet culminating in a rustic dish called tshài-bué-thng (“leftovers soup”), a stew made by throwing all the different leftover foods from a banquet into a single pot to simmer. It is messy and intensely mixed, carrying the heavy, lingering flavours of everything that came before it. This final dish symbolises the state of their relationship: the aftertaste remains.

In light of these realisations, Aoyama Chizuko loses her famously “monstrous appetite”, no longer able to “consume” Taiwan now that she has been forced to confront the human cost of her presence as a coloniser. It ensures that when Chizuko eventually returns to Japan to write her book, she can never again pretend, or be so naïve as to believe, that her journey was merely a harmless, beautiful culinary tour.

The novel prompts us to ask how we act and think when we travel.

There are lessons here for us today. At one point in the novel, Mishima, Chi-chan’s replacement as translator, speaks frankly to Aoyama Chizuko about what he perceives as her “intellectual arrogance”, telling her that “the way you talk about the Island’s flavours does not sound to me like you are appreciating them for being delicious but more for being exotic, as one might appreciate a rare animal.” The novel prompts us to ask how we act and think when we travel, particularly in so-called “undeveloped” countries.

Taiwan Travelogue challenges us on several levels: as a travelogue, a cookbook, a romance, and an examination of power relationships. The novel’s “onion layers” mean that rereading it is almost mandatory.

^{How to cite, Eagleton, Jennifer. “The Colonial Gaze at the Dinner Table: A Review of Yáng Shuāng-zǐ’s Taiwan Travelogue.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 5 Jul. 2026. chajournal.com/2026/07/05/taiwan-travelogue.}

Jennifer Eagleton, a Hong Kong resident since October 1997, is a close observer of Hong Kong society and politics. Jennifer has written for Hong Kong Free Press, Mekong Review, and Education about Asia. She has published two books on Hong Kong political discourse: Discursive Change in Hong Kong(Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) and Hong Kong’s Second Return to China, A Critical Discourse Study of the National Security Law and its Aftermath(Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). Her poetry has appeared in Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, People, Pandemic & ####### (Verve Poetry Press, 2020), and Making Space: A Collection of Writing and Art (Cart Noodles Press, 2023). [All contributions by Jennifer Eagleton.]