These days, when I think of Taiwan, the first thing that comes to mind is semiconductors. Just a few years ago, Taiwan was a country of bubble tea, night markets and mango shaved ice. But now it is different. Whenever Taiwan is mentioned in the news, TSMC naturally follows. It is a colossal name that moves the world economy and technological hegemony. Thanks to this, Taiwan no longer feels like a distant island nation but like a neighbor that has come close to us.
Recently, however, I encountered an entirely different Taiwan. It happened while reading "Taiwan Travelogue, 1938," the novel that this year became the first Taiwanese work to win the International Booker Prize. Instead of semiconductor factories, the smell of market alleys; instead of cutting-edge technology, the memory of food; instead of economic news, the human heart unfolded before me.
As the title suggests, this novel travels through the Taiwan of 1938. A Japanese woman and a Taiwanese woman ride trains together, roaming across the island. They eat, talk and gaze at the scenery. As you turn the pages, the smell of steaming dumplings and fragrant tea seems to reach the tip of your nose. Yet strangely, between those delicious dishes, the word "colony" seeps in like a shadow.
That part lingered in my mind for a long time. For me, as a Korean, the period of Japanese colonial rule sits within a relatively clear framework of memory. It is a narrative of resistance and independence, of plunder and liberation. Of course, countless individual stories exist within it, but that is the main thread. The Japanese empire was something to be fought against, and the colonial experience was something to be overcome.
But the scenery shown by "Taiwan Travelogue, 1938" was quite different. The Taiwanese people in the novel use Japanese and encounter Japanese culture. Yet that does not make them Japanese. Between the Japanese and the Taiwanese, closeness and distance exist at the same time. Intimacy and strangeness are oddly intermingled. They are like people who, while sitting at the same table and eating the same food, hold different memories.
When I think about it, Taiwan's colonial experience resembles Korea's, yet differs from it. Both countries were ruled by the Japanese empire, but the way that memory remains in the present is not the same. In Korean society, the colonial experience is still an important part of national identity. By contrast, for some Taiwanese who, immediately after Japanese rule, experienced the authoritarian regime of the Nationalist government, the period of Japanese colonial rule remains a memory of oppression and, at the same time, a memory of modernization.
I find this difference interesting. We often try to remember the colonial experience as a single emotion. We rage, or condemn, or try to forget. But real history is not that simple. Even in the colonial era, people loved, made friends and ate when they were hungry. Even under the harsh politics of empire, daily life went on.
That is precisely why "Taiwan Travelogue, 1938" is special. No grand hero appears in this novel. Instead, food appears. A bowl of noodles, a piece of confectionery, a cup of tea. And it is those very dishes that bear witness to history. Empires create borders, but food crosses borders. Colonial rule ended, but the flavors remain. Japanese cooking methods seep into Taiwanese food, and Taiwanese flavors cross back over to Japan.
History, one might say, sometimes lingers longer on the tip of the tongue than in documents. As I read this novel, I thought of Korea and Taiwan together again and again. Two societies that passed through the same era yet came to hold different memories; people who suffered the same wounds yet carried their scars in different ways. Perhaps understanding history is not a matter of having the same memories, but of understanding different memories.
