Taiwan Travelogue: History, Identity & Food

How did a novel about two women eating their way around 1938 Taiwan win both the US National Book Award for Translated Literature and the International Booker Prize? No book from Taiwan had ever won either. No Mandarin-language novel had ever won the Booker.

Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuangzi, translated by Lin King, follows a Japanese novelist and her Taiwanese interpreter as they ride the trains of colonial Taiwan, sharing meal after extraordinary meal. Through careful historical research, delicate literary craft and frankly mouthwatering depictions of Taiwanese food, it has provoked a worldwide conversation about Taiwan: its unique history, what its people have lived through, and the identity they have shaped over time.

Join us for a panel that follows the book’s own path, from the novel into Taiwan’s history and identity, before finishing at the table. Three panellists, each of whom knows a different Taiwan:

Kathleen Calderwood is a senior journalist and researcher at the ABC, and was previously the broadcaster’s East Asia correspondent, based in Taiwan, covering China-Taiwan relations and the 2024 Taiwan presidential election.

Dr Mei-fen Kuo is a historian at Macquarie University specialising in Chinese diaspora politics, Taiwan Studies and Cold War Asia-Pacific history. She is the author of Making Chinese Australia, and her essay on Taiwan Travelogue for The Conversation asked why Australians have seen so little of the real Taiwan.

Kevin Cheng is a Taiwanese Australian journalist and food writer published in the Sydney Morning Herald, Good Food and SBS. He co-founded Soul of Chinatown and leads renewal projects across Haymarket, including the Neon Playground street festival.

The discussion runs for 50 minutes, followed by audience Q&A. You don’t need to have read the book to enjoy the evening, though we suspect you’ll leave wanting to.

This is the third event in the MOCA History Forum, a series of public talks on the histories of Chinese communities in Australia and the world they connect to.