The Unease Left by the Booker-Winning Taiwan Travelogue

Are We Obsessed with "Translating" Difference in Architecture and Education?

When I first opened the table of contents of Taiwan Travelogue, it appeared to be a translated 1938 travelogue by the Japanese author Chizuko Aoyama. It reads like a culinary tale set during the Japanese colonial period, using the longitudinal railway as its spatial axis and local cuisine as its connecting nodes, documenting the interactions between the Japanese author and her Taiwanese interpreter.

Yet, the book didn't offer the gentle warmth I had expected; instead, it left a profound sense of unease lingering in my mind.

Beneath the nostalgic descriptions of colonial-era cuisine, I could faintly discern a much colder structure. Within this seemingly harmonious and intellectual cross-cultural exchange lay hidden dynamics. On this journey, who gets to explore and marvel? Who merely receives? Who has the privilege to draw close, and who lacks the right to refuse? Who dictates how this experience is described, and who is stripped of the power to write in their own voice?

It is a weighing scale with its weights removed—the colonizer and the colonized sitting at opposite ends.

Pseudo-Translation

This invisible, intangible power imbalance only fully reveals itself at the very end. After repeatedly cross-referencing subtle clues, you suddenly realise this is actually a "pseudo-translation" novel. The author, Yang Shuang-zi, cleverly appropriates the stylistic tropes of European medieval chivalric romance—using its romanticised filter and top-down, "explore and save" perspective—to package the exoticised foreign authority inherent in modern colonialism.

This is exactly why its English translation succeeded in winning the International Booker Prize. It is highly artistic; it doesn't smooth out Taiwan's complex historical context into easily digestible English. Instead, through rich footnotes and multilingual pinyin, it deliberately preserves the linguistic barriers. It rejects oversimplification, allowing readers to truly feel that "untranslated difference" is itself the very entry point to understanding Taiwan's complexity.

The Trap in Architecture and Education

The reason this book struck such a deep chord with me is that it precisely targets the traps I constantly encounter in my own architectural and educational practice.

We often unconsciously treat "dialogue" and "connection" as a universal cure. Whenever we try to understand someone or something completely different from ourselves, we tend to unknowingly set conditions, forcing the other party to speak our language or demanding they conform to our rules.

Take the preservation of old buildings. We constantly talk about protecting cultural heritage, but often, we're just "adjusting" historical spaces to fit modern aesthetics, forcibly turning living history into lifeless museum exhibits. The same happens in experimental education. We loudly champion giving children "freedom," but turn around and try to shove their individuality into quantifiable grading rubrics. We aren't really helping students spread their wings of freedom; we are just forcing them into our own mental boxes.

Meditation Before a Wall

A few days ago, while conducting a site visit for a space, I stared at a wall, debating whether it "needed to be smoothed out." I kept thinking: not every blank space needs to be filled, and not every difference needs to be translated into the same language.

A space shouldn't merely teach people how to reach uniformity; it should teach us how to coexist with differences and acknowledge the existence of boundaries. We aren't just designing spatial flows and user experiences; we are designing relationships—creating places where different people, varied experiences, and distinct senses of time can coexist without swallowing one another.

This is something I have come to believe more firmly than ever recently.

A truly mature space is not one where everything is spelled out, but one capable of holding what remains unsaid.

A truly mature education does not mould every child into the same shape, but accepts that some forms of growth inherently defy quick quantification.

And perhaps, a truly mature civilisation is not about achieving consensus more efficiently, but knowing when to pause and respect the boundaries that will forever remain untranslatable.