Spent two weeks reading the Chinese and English editions of Taiwan Travelogue, winner of the 2026 International Booker Prize, and writing a lengthy review, as well as a much shorter version for the newspaper. Having immersed myself deeply in the book for so long, it was hard to get out of it. So i ended up browsing relevant materials online, including various interviews with both the author Yáng Shuāng-zǐ (@roseyanger) and the translator Lin King (@linkinglionking).
It is a pity that many of the interviews with Yáng are only in Mandarin with subtitles in Traditional Chinese, so it is impossible for anglophone readers to better understand the author via the content. Watching/listening to her walking around Taichung City as her hometown — where Aoyama Chizuko and Ông Tshian-hóh/Chi-chan are based in Taiwan Travelogue — is so inspiring. It also makes me reflect on how much I think I know about my own homeland/hometown and how much I still don’t.
Watching interviews with King is a completely different cup of tea, especially when she talks about her research while translating the book. Based on this content, I found the book Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japan’s Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia: 1895-1945 (2022) by Seiji Shirane, and promptly downloaded it while the Kindle edition is still free. Another title is Taiwan under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1894-1945: History, Culture, Memory (2006), edited by the renowned scholars David Der-wei Wang and Liao Ping-hui. Alas, I cannot afford even the Kindle edition of this book at the price of $84.72!
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Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 