A beautifully tender story, with a sharp bite of post-colonial critique.
The expoloration of foods is wonderfully done, with an ever-accommodating Chi-Chun. It's such a pleasure having her tell us all kinds of rich details about the ingredients, the stories, and the devouring of dishes.
Near the end, the unwitting colonial arrogance and its inescapable lens are explained to us (or Aoyama) rather heavy-handedly or brusquely, but that's maybe also just refreshing in the context of this book's frames.
And it is the framing that might even give the most emotional blow. By the time we're reading the English translation, the story has already been wrapped in a new modern Mandarin translation of the old Japanese text and its reprint, and a Chinese translation. Reading through those last few pages, with these fictional afterwords, and translator's notes, I hadn't exptected that part to still play such a powerful role in sealing the book's emotional impact.
This book might have also just come to me precisely at a fruitful moment, having just travelled to Taiwan myself earlier this year, and being in the early stages of a fascination with Taiwanese culture and food. I can imagine it'd be less interesting to people who have never really thought about this part of the world before. Though even then, the dynamic between Aoyama and Chi-Chan feels universal in its purity and its restraints placed upon it by external expectations and history. That's something we all have to deal with across the world.