Two Works by Yang Shuang-zi (楊双子)

[douqi]

Somehow I managed to miss telling absolutely anyone about what, as far as I can tell, is the first baihe novel ever to be published in English translation. It's not anything that I've ever seen discussed in fandom circles online. It is Taiwan Travelogue (臺灣漫遊錄, pinyin: taiwan manyou lu) by Taiwanese author Yang Shuang-zi (楊双子), translated by Lin Kang. The English translation was published by Greywolf Press in November 2024, and won the National Book Award for Translated Literature for that year. Here's the synopsis from the publisher's website:

May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.

Soon a Taiwanese woman — who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name — is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the "something" is.

Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.

As the synopsis indicates, it's a lot more literary than something one might expect out of, say, your average JJWXC novel (though a litfic strain of baihe writing on the major platforms does exist). It's also not a classic romance as such. In this interview (in Chinese; no English translation available), the author discusses her interest in exploring a relationship that's 'greater than friendship, but short of a full-blown romance',* which she views as a (or perhaps the) classic preoccupation of baihe (and its very adjacent genre, yuri). She should know, because she's one of the (if not the) leading authority on Taiwanese baihe, having literally written the book about the genre (based on her Masters thesis on the topic).

*This, incidentally, explains why the major English-language reviews generally describe this as a tale of 'friendship'. Talya Zak's review in The Atlantic does get somewhat closer.

There's also a Japanese translation, by Yuko Miura, of Taiwan Travelogue available, which was published in 2023. It won Japan's 'Best Translation Award' for that year.

Yang Shuang-zi has also written a number of other baihe works, none of which have been translated officially into English. However, noonreveries on Twitter is currently fan translating the manhua adaptation of another Yang Shuang-zi novel, Fantastical Tales of Flowers (綺譚花物語, pinyin: qi tan hua wuyu) into English. The first part of the translation can be read here.

Some autobiographical information about Yang Shuang-zi that I cribbed mostly from the Chinese-language Wikipedia entry about her. 'Yang Shuang-zi' is a pen name; her real name is Yang Jo-tzu (楊若慈). She had a twin sister, Yang Jo-hui (楊若暉). They were both interested in yuri and baihe, and Yang Jo-tzu apparently began her writing career with Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha fanfic. The Yang sisters initially intended to use 'Yang Shuang-zi' ('shuangzi' means 'twins') as a joint pen name; however, Yang Jo-hui died of cancer in 2015, before they were able to publish anything jointly. The name 'Shuang-zi' is rendered in kanji rather than traditional Chinese characters as a tribute to Yang Jo-hui's interest in Japanese history. There's more information about Yang Shuang-zi and her work on the Taiwanese Ministry of Culture's website.

Comments

[douqi]

Let the record show that, after I finished writing this post, I went and bought all the Yang Shuang-zi baihe novels that are still in print.

[meikuree]

oh, this is so great to see Yang Shuangzi’s stuff here! I’ve been osmosing some things about Taiwan Travelogue from nozomi ‘s posts. that fact about her sister is sad but poignant.

(and this is irrelevant to everything else, but most siblings I’ve known/heard of relevant to this have 1 person interested in femslash/yuri and the other person more interested in slash, so that bit about her sister is a cool exception.)

[douqi]

That siblings thing sounds fascinating!

[aurumcalendula]

I had been wondering what the story was w/r/t the dedication. That's very poignant.

Litfic-y stuff tends be very hit and miss with me, but I'm really enjoying this so far!

[douqi]

Great to know you're enjoying it! Please feel free to post a review on the comm when you're done.

[superborb]

nnozomi's review https://nnozomi.dreamwidth.org/83571.html specifically about the different translations might be of interest

[douqi]

Super interesting! Thank you.

[silversea]

Interesting! One of my book clubs was reading this, but I was in the midst of traveling and didn't have the time to read it. It was already on my tbr for catching up with my book club, but now knowing that it's the first translated baihe just moved it up higher.

I remember the book club generally thought highly of the book, so that's nice.

[douqi]

That's very promising! I hope you enjoy the book when you do have time to get to it.

[bobbu]

Hopping onto here just to say that Yang Shuang-zi has made it onto the syllabus of a class I'm hoping to take next semester. This is so exciting!

[douqi]

That is so exciting! Hope you manage to get on that class. And do feel free to report back if there are any interesting discussions (I'm sure there will be).