Taiwan Travelogue

May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has s'ailed from her home ¡n Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been ¡nvited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to tasfe as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear. Soon a Taiwanese woman—who is younger even than she is, and whose ñame shares characters with hers—is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticuious Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melón tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is. Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered Japanese text, Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveáis how power dynamics inflect our most intímate relationships.