A Fictional Translator Writing Taiwan’s Unique Story–An Interview with Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ
Original (原文) by Wáng Shùn-wēi for The Reporter (報導者）
Taiwan Travelogue tells the story of Japanese-born author Aoyama Chizuko who, in May of 1938, is invited by the Taiwanese provincial government to tour the island for a year. When she arrives, she is given a translator, Ō Chizuru, to accompany her. They board the train together and, heading north, travel along the rail line, tasting quintessential Taiwanese delicacies along the way.
Although she is traveling on the government’s dime, Aoyama refuses to write in favor of the Japanese Southern Expansion. Instead she tours around, trying unique foods, recording customs, and at times casting doubt on men’s contributions to society or the ongoing invasion of Manchuria. At the same time, Ō Chizuru (also known as Chi-chan) and Aoyama’s relationship becomes a driving force of the narrative, as they slip off honorifics and formalities and their romantic relationship starts to heat up.
These two characters, with similar sounding names, act as mirrors to one another. One is an “imperial citizen” and the other a “native islander” yet their similarities burst out in plain view: they are both discriminated against as women, they both love literature, and have to navigate language barriers and colonial tensions. Aoyama is perplexed by Chizuru’s apparent “Noh Mask”.1 Why does she appear so sweet and innocent yet seem so distant and on guard?
Aoyama at first attempts to convince Chi-chan to go to Japan with her and establish herself as an independent woman, but Chi-chan feels like the offer is shrouded in arrogance and insincerity. The two of them ultimately part. And from the mouth of the fictional Chi-Chan we receive a message with real-world implications: the friendship between a colonial subject and a member of the ruling elite can never be completely equal.
The cultural and linguistic landscape of the time was rich and complex: “the national language” would have been Japanese, “native islander” would have referred to a wide array of people speaking Taiwanese, Hakka, or indigenous languages.
Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ, writing in Mandarin, “translates” the Japanese era for the modern Taiwanese reader, sharing both Mandarin and indigenous terms for explicating the island, and like peeling the layers of an onion, reveals the multilayered magics of literature.
Historical “Yuri” Literature Shines Light on the Unique Colonial Experience in Taiwan
Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ undertook the task of telling a Yuri2story set in the Japanese colonial era.
She reflected on her own “Yuri” upbringing: born in the military village of Wuri in Taichung County, she was raised in a family that held on to nationalist teachings of Chiang Ching-kuo (the son and successor of Taiwanese presidency of Chiang Kai-shek). As a youth, she took part in the Sunflower Movement in March of 2014, which she considers a moment of enlightenment, where she began to consider how different Taiwan is from China.
“After the Sunflower Movement, I wanted to use literature to reflect Taiwan’s relationship with China. The crucial point was: When it’s all said and done, are there even any similarities between Taiwan and China?”
She published a lot of fiction online during college, which was often immediately pirated by Chinese publishers. Unhappy, she decided to fight back by slipping in “stuff that Chinese people wouldn’t understand” such as esoteric Taiwanese slang. “A lot of Taiwanese slipped into China through these online stories”.
Ultimately, she decided to “Only write stories that Taiwanese people would know, only that which sprouts from Taiwan”. One such story is the Japanese colonial period which is particular to Taiwan and cannot be simplified or paved over.
Her novel Seasons of Bloom and her short story “Young Women, Blooming Island”3 are the earliest examples of Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ’s foray into historical Yuri and a literary launching off point, as both stories exist in the same universe.
Seasons of Bloom traces the story of Yang Hsin-Yi, a college student, who, after falling overboard, “travels” a hundred years back in time to colonial Taiwan, becoming Yang Seh-Ni, the eldest daughter of the Yang family’s ancestral lineage “Ti Ju Teng” in Taichung.
The story has a modern feminist spirit which grapples with the vicissitudes of societal conflict, especially gender-based conflicts in families in Japanese-controlled Taiwan. The book’s title is an homage to the Taichung-based journalist Yang Chian-Ho, who many consider to be Taiwan’s first female journalist and who wrote a short novel herself titled The Season When Flowers Bloom.
Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ said that before writing any longer novel, she first likes to delve into shorter pieces to hone in on the style and the language. About halfway through writing Seasons of Bloom she felt like the supporting characters only functioned to move the plot forward and so she broke off and wrote independent stories for them, one of which became “Young Women, Blooming Island”. One of her short stories “Gold Osmanthus, Silver Osmanthus”4 tackles a relationship between two Japanese classmates in the colonial era which served as an outline for the future Taiwan Travelogue.
“Blooming” Sister Works Republished | Mandarin Text is “Translated” to Represent the Multilingual Japanese Period
The two “sister” texts Seasons of Bloom and “Young Women, Blooming Island” were recently republished as new editions. The Japanese-Taiwanense illustrator Gao Yan illustrated the covers for these, which depict Taiwanese courtyard style buildings surrounded by flowers, capturing the intimacy shared between the young characters. In addition to the new book jacket, a major linguistic change took place.
In the revised versions, characters speak Taiwanese at home and Japanese at work or school. This complicated linguistic landscape was the societal reality at the time and reminds us that language barriers are created in a colonized society.
At the press conference announcing the revised editions, Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ said that when writing the “blooming” series, the biggest hurdle was the language question. She still grapples with how best to represent Taiwanese in literature even after ten years of incorporating it in her writing. She is, after all, first and foremost a Mandarin author and it is not always natural to just switch to Taiwanese. Her earliest attempts at Taiwanese read like they were first written in Mandarin and then “translated” into Taiwanese, heavily relying on online lingo to make the distinction more clear.
The reprint of Seasons of Bloom is partially written in Mandarin and partially in Taiwanese, with an attached pronunciation guide for the Japanese words that pop up. On the other hand, “Young Women Blooming Island” is still written entirely in Mandarin so that someday if any publishing house wants to obtain the translation rights, the text would be more friendly to the translator.
Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ believes that Seasons of Bloom and “Young Women, Blooming Island” are a template for creating a fictional universe where real world linguistic complexities are represented. Readers, translators, and future researchers alike can grasp the linguistic stratagem Yáng is implementing which creates new possibilities in the text. The biggest obstacle, however, is how to write Taiwanese using Mandarin Chinese script while also signaling to the readers that the characters are actually speaking Taiwanese. “That is so difficult. I can’t say if I really do it well myself.”
When working on the rewrites, Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ turned to AI to help her best implement Taiwanese into the story. However, she warned that it is just a supplementary tool and “you cannot completely trust AI” because sometimes it will just invent fake words. When the audiobook for Seasons of Bloom was recorded, she realized that some of the sections with Taiwanese did not feel natural and there was still room for revisions.
Taiwan Travelogue is a Pseudo-Translation which Imitates a Historical Text
Turning to Taiwan Travelogue, this “pseudo-translation” carries a complex linguistic structure.
Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ said that her family records and the oral histories she has encountered informed this unique structure. Much of the long-standing texts from the Japanese colonization were written in Japanese and only later translated, shedding new light on her parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Through translation, her family history was both “dug up” and allowed to move into the present, giving life to this unique narrative design.
Family histories and language are often intertwined for Taiwanese authors. Hsin Yung-ching recreated the cookbook written by his mother, Eisei Shin. In doing so, he relied on his mother’s memories and translations of Tainanese cuisine, which would have been mostly written in Taiwanese or Japanese. When the book was published, the epilogue read “My mother’s memories”. This influenced Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ to imitate the same kind of message in Taiwan Travelogue. The novel’s “pseudo” epilogue has gone over serious revisions, almost as if history itself cannot be trusted.
Yáng’s pseudo-translation has garnered its fair share of interest and criticism. When the first version was published in early 2020, many readers believed it was a real translation of a text from the Japanese colonial era. When they realized the truth, many felt “deceived”. In later reprints, the text explicitly states “by Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ” and the novel “is completely a work of fiction.”
Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ said that in the first run of the book, she scattered many clues about its authenticity: from the introduction to the copyright page, even to the extent that Aoyama’s name is borrowed from a Case Closed character. But even with these signals, it was still a publishing risk and her publisher worried this ruse would inflame readers and reviewers alike.
Yáng pointed out that in Taiwan, editors who work on novels often just give feedback on grammar and formatting. It’s very rare for them to make structural changes. But Yáng has always hoped for partnership with her editors. The first print of Taiwan Travelogue reads “written by Aoyama Chizuko, translated by Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ”. She knew that this was an audacious leap of literary experimentation and that the publishing house was taking a big risk by running that.
She took this risk only after collaboration with her writer friend Eugene Chen. The first time they met, it was clear that Chen was the type of editing partner that Yáng wanted. From August of 2019 to March of 2020, Taiwan Travelogue went through five revisions. Chen fastidiously examined the plot, giving Yáng peace of mind.
From a “Fabricated Translation” to Literary Awards and International Acclaim.
The English translation of the novel broke into a literary world that still prioritizes European and American works. “I realized that both the contents of my book and the real world product were concerned with the same thing: It was all about translation.”
Taiwan Travelogue was first translated into Japanese in 2023, and then the English version hit the market in 2024. Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ said that at first, she only expected a Japanese translation would be published and was interested that through “translation it would return to the colonial language”. She remains shocked that following the English version, she has sold publishing rights in over twenty countries.
For translators, Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ admitted, the task of translating all of the Taiwanese cuisines, local customs, and oral histories in Taiwan Travelogue is a difficult one. Lǔ ròu fàn 5, sticky rice cakes, and millet tea, among others, will be familiar to the Taiwanese reader, but completely new to a foreign audience. For example, the Danish translator kept asking Yáng what “millet tea” is and what kind of rice makes “sticky rice cakes”, and even asked for help constructing a glossary.
Translators from different languages took different approaches. Yáng says that, for example, the Korean publisher preferred an easy to understand text and was quick to change things that might be confusing to Korean readers or simply omit things altogether. The German edition was also more of a “seamless translation” and the editors tried to spare readers any obstructions that might arise from linguistic differences. Conversely, English translator Lin King took what she called a “maximalist” approach to translating the novel, intentionally leaving roadblocks for the reader, and demanding they expend mental energy to truly engage with the text.
Yáng has also observed that the questions she receives from translators mirror cultural differences. Translators from nearby Asian countries often ask more specific questions, and get into the weeds about the implications of certain words or phrases. On the other hand, European translators are more likely to ask basic questions about culture or food. This trend highlights the different starting points from which people in different cultural contexts approach Taiwanese literature.
Probing the Topic of Female Desire in Her New Work
Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ revealed that her new work Dining Table on a Street Corner 6 will be released along with a manga-version of the text. The work takes place in Yáng’s familiar hometown of Taichung. The female protagonist rents a room above the Central Market and takes up a position as a research assistant–a position that once offered much promise but soon becomes stagnant.
Since her small apartment doesn’t even have a kitchen, she has to find her food out in the world. The story’s turning point is when another young female character appears and they work together to find sustenance, forming a relationship on the way. Compared to the familiar Yuri trope of “romantic feelings under surface level friendship”, this is more of a lesbian love story.
As the plot develops, the reader slowly becomes aware that the main character’s life fell off the rails because she was the victim of a #MeToo incident and forced to drop out of graduate school. She cannot return to her old life and the dreams that she had. Yáng started writing around 2022 and made many revisions to the text after the #MeToo movement’s highpoint in Taiwan in 2023, as well as the Central Market explosion in 2025.
Yáng said that she thinks of herself as “a novelist for the people” and plans to go deep into the protagonist’s #MeToo experience, but that she does not see herself as advocating one position.
“My hope is that when people read novels for entertainment, they are also reading a vision of the future. But I do not take on an activist tone or tell people what to think. I just write the stories.”
Stories allow those who read them to get into the characters mind, together erasing the hurt from her body, and learning how to move on.
She believes that through a novel that tackles Japanese colonialism through the Taiwanese perspective, one is forced to face oneself and their place in the world. “If we want to move toward a better future, we must first understand that past that has already unfolded.” You can reach people simply by disseminating a story like this, and important discussions about previously considered “sensitive topics” can become more ordinary.
She also hopes to take on more “adult” writing that features two women. She jokes that right now her current specialty, writing about food, is very sensual, but explicitly sexual writing is a bit more challenging and she would need to “do more research”.
When she was completing her Master’s degree, she focused on novels depicting female relationships in the 90s and later. But she still felt like she was still constrained mainly to the standard heteroesexual plotlines that dominate literature. She shared that sometimes sexual descriptions are just “pistons moving” and don’t give care and attention to the female body. “I want to know what ‘female only interaction’ looks like and ‘readers seeking femininity’ are actually looking for.”
In reality, over the last thirty or so years, there are plenty of female writers trying to do this very thing. The only problem is they haven’t reached the level of popularity it requires to get everyone reading the same thing, discussing the same topics.
Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ put her head in her hands and laughed, “It’s so hard! There is so much to read…how can I possibly write?”
Returning to Amber, Yáng’s First Inspiration
According to Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ, the most daunting challenge is how to continually hone her craft in the midst of a busy schedule–recently made much busier by the international explosion of Taiwan Travelogue. Self-described as “on the extreme end of the Myers Briggs judging scale”, it’s a daily occurrence to see her pull out her green notebook and sigh heavily, “There is just no time to write!”
She spoke at 108 events in 2025, more than double the previous year. She also expended a lot of time redrafting Dining Table on a Street Corner. With a bitter smile, she added that amidst all that, she only read 20 books last year– a serious reduction from her average of about a hundred a year. Liú Ài-Líng became Yáng’s literary agent in 2023 and helps her manage her invitations and filter for suitable events. “Really she helps me reject invitations.”
Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ added that other authors told her “get ready to always be busy” and now with the acclaim she’s getting for the Booker Prize, she fears writing time will continue to be hard to come by.
Yáng took on writing full time at age 31 and she told herself: if by 35 I’m not making the equivalent of a full salary, then I’ll return to an office job. The deadline came and went, but she continued writing, and at 40 became an internationally recognized author.
In 2015 her twin sister Yáng Ruò-huī passed away from cancer. She was Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ’s creative partner and translator. They both had complete confidence in one another. At the time “Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ” was a pen name that they shared, using the Japanese word “Shuang” that means “twins”. They chose to use Japanese so that when, one day, when their work would be translated into Japanese, the audience would understand their name.
What would the remaining half of the Shuang twins want to say to her sister?
“When we had about half of Seasons of Bloom drafted, my sister said ‘This novel is going to be super popular.’ She kept saying that I could do it… I could definitely do it. I want to tell her today, you could not imagine the awards this book is receiving, but I know that she would still respond, ‘I knew you can do it.’”
The “translator’s note” in Taiwan Travelogue uses Yáng Ruò-huī’s translator name “Amber”. The “translator” tells us: Fiction is a condensed imagination suspended in a chunk of amber. This fiction reaches all the possibilities of communication, and also honors her sister.
- Wooden mask used in Japanese operas.[↩]
- Lit. “lily”; Japanese literary genre that tells the story of two female protagonists[↩]
- There’s no English version of this text so this is just a rough translation of the title[↩]
- Same[↩]
- stewed pork rice[↩]
- Again, there’s no English version of this text so this is just a rough translation of the title[↩]