Exploring Taiwan’s Many Stories: Taiwan Travelogue Author and TAS Alum Translator Visit TAS

More than 60 parents, students, faculty, alumni, and friends of Taipei American School gathered on campus Wednesday evening for a special literary conversation with the author of Taiwan Travelogue, Yang Shuang-zi, as well as the novel’s translator, TAS Class of 2012 alum, Lin King. 

The evening brought together community members from across generations, including a group of Columbia University alumni visiting to support the translator, for a wide-ranging discussion about literature, language, food, identity, and the many ways Taiwan’s stories can be told. 

Students at the Center of the Conversation 

Upper School students played a central role throughout the event. A panel of student readers interviewed the author and translator in both Mandarin and English, while students also supported the bilingual conversation for the audience. 

These student-led questions invited the speakers to reflect on how Taiwan Travelogue reimagined Taiwan’s history through the eyes of its characters and how translation decisions shape what readers around the world understand about that history. 

History, Politics, and Who Gets to Tell the Story 

Early in the discussion, Ms. Yang spoke about how our understanding of history is often shaped by politics. Which events are emphasized, whose voices are included, and which books appear in classrooms? She described how Taiwan Travelogue responds to this by centering a woman’s perspective and revisiting the 1930s through the eyes of those whose experiences have often been left out of official narratives. 

Students connected this to their own learning in English and history classes, noticing how reading choices in school can subtly reinforce certain versions of the past. The author encouraged them to look critically at whose voices are missing and to see literature as a way to “rewrite” what we think we know. 

The Challenge and Joy of Translation 

Ms. King shared the unusual path that led to her work on the English edition of Taiwan Travelogue. During the pandemic, she was invited to translate an excerpt of Taiwanese queer literature for an online series. That opportunity connected her with the author and, eventually, to Taiwan Travelogue, a book many in the industry had considered “untranslatable” because of its layered use of Japanese, Taiwanese Hokkien, and historical place names. 

Rather than simplifying the text, she described her decision to preserve much of this complexity in English, using footnotes and careful choices about names to keep the novel rooted in its time and place. For readers, this means moving between languages and references, mirroring the experience of living in a multilingual, multicultural Taiwan. 

Food, Banquets, and a Multicultural Taiwan 

One of the most engaging moments came when students asked about the novel’s chapter titles, each named after a traditional banquet dish. Ms. Yang explained that early-20th-century Taiwanese banquets were elaborate affairs that reflected the island’s global influences, combining Taiwanese, Japanese, Western, and Chinese cuisines. 

By structuring the book like a twelve-course banquet, she used food as a way to “serve” readers a slice of Taiwan’s cultural history, challenging stereotypes of Taiwan in the 1930s as only poor or isolated, and instead revealing a place already shaped by many intersecting cultures. 

Friendship, Intimacy, and Identity 

The conversation also turned to the relationship between the novel’s two central women. Audience members asked whether their bond should be read as romantic. The author playfully refused to give a definitive answer, encouraging readers to “follow the clues” in tone, gesture, and language to draw their own conclusions. 

Both the author and translator spoke about the importance of recognizing the depth of women’s friendships and intimacies, whether they are labeled as romantic or not. In doing so, they invited students to think about relationships, gender, and allyship in more nuanced ways. 

The exploration of complexity extended to questions of Taiwanese identity and sovereignty. The speakers reflected on Taiwan as a place shaped by many layers of history and influence, Japanese, Chinese, Indigenous, and more, and on the difficulty of reducing that richness to a single story or simple category. 

A Community Conversation that Continues 

The event embodied TAS’s commitment to global citizenship, critical thinking, and multilingual engagement. Students were not only readers and listeners, but also interviewers, interpreters, and co-creators of the conversation. 

By the end of the evening, audience members left with new insights into Taiwanese history, a deeper appreciation for the craft of translation, and a renewed sense of how literature can open space for complex, sometimes uncomfortable, but essential dialogue. 

As one community member noted afterward, events like this highlight “how many different stories of Taiwan are still waiting to be told” and how the TAS community can play an active role in listening, questioning, and sharing them.