Fantastic collection of short stories, each a little snippet of a different world. I wanted more from each of them, but each one gave me so much to think about - they all ask such big questions underneath such digestible stories!

The pun in the conceit of this one is also too fun to pass up - changing planes like at an airport. Get it!?

I'll be trying to get a physical copy of this one for my collection, I think!

Taiwan Travelogue is written with so much care for its main characters and executes its premise perfectly. It's a 'translation' of a fictional Japanese series of food journals written with a developing relationship between a Japanese writer and her interpreter/guide in Taiwan during the era of attempted Japanization under colonial rule/occupation in the 1930s. It's a backdrop that works phenomenally well for this book, and the main characters felt so utterly believable in their roles.

I read it in English, and feel I probably missed some nuance - Lin King does a fantastic job translating, and her fingerprints are everywhere throughout this book, but I found myself wishing I could read the original Chinese.

I've seen this marketed as 'love between women', but I don't think this is an accurate depiction of what this book is about. The relationship is front and center in the story, but this is not a romance book in the sense that you might be expecting hearing that. This book is about the complexities of relationships and power and implicit bias and culture and change, and food is the main vehicle for this - each item that we come across has some relevance to reveal.

We see so many places, and so much food, and all of it is written with so much love for Taiwan. It's clear that Yang Shuang-zi really took time to do research on historical places and tourist sites, and wanted to show the best parts off.

There's very little plot here aside from traveling and eating, and I kind of felt like that was part of the point - colonial tourism doesn't have an overarching plot or a reason. We are asked to confront our biases, motivations, and to examine the lens we see places we visit with.

The tension in this novel instead comes from the identities of the main characters. Can a tourist from a colonizing power ever truly love the colonized land they're on? Can they ever truly appreciate and be immersed in its culture, without seeing it as lesser? Is it possible to truly know someone when you have a difference in power? This is one of my favourite character-driven books I've read in a long time.

I LOVED Taiwan Travelogue. Please read it - just don't expect a happy sapphic romance!