Rebacca F Kuang has become a bit of a literary superstar on the back of a few of diverse novels. Babel was an award-winning magical academy story that took on the idea of colonialism and empire through the lens of fantasy. Yellowface grappled with issues of authenticity and bias in the publishing industry. And then Katabasis sent its characters to hell (literally) but also felt like a way of Kuang working through her own PhD trauma. All of these seemed to draw from Kuang’s personal experience. As does her latest novel Taipei Story, a coming-of-age story centred around a Chinese-American student who travels to Taiwan to learn Chinese.
Taipei Story does not have much of a plot to speak of. The story revolves around Lily, daughter of Chinese immigrants to America. She wins a scholarship to do an intensive Chinese course in Taiwan. Lily is hoping by improving her language skills so she can connect with her grandparents who still live in China. And besides a fairly punishing academic schedule, Lily has to deal with the interpersonal dynamics of young adults away from home and some culture shock of living in Taiwan. Suffice to say, it does not go all that well for her. And that is before some additional family drama.
But this is a coming-of-age story so going through these experiences is portrayed as a way of helping Lily grows as a person. And in case readers were in any doubt about that, Lily herself reflects fairly early on in the novel:
I was on a coming-of-age journey to reconnect with my culture.
Strip out Lily’s fairly standard journey of personal growth and what is left in Taipei Story are two things. The main element is essentially a travelogue – including a smattering of history, where to go in Taiwan and what to eat. And these descriptions and incidents are filled with information that feels like it was cribbed straight out of a tourist brochure like this:
We learnt that Taipei 101 was the eleventh-tallest skyscraper in the world, and had been the tallest skyscraper when it was built in 2004, before it was overtaken by the Burj Khalifa.
The second aspect are the musings on language. This aspect follows closely on from what Kuang was trying to do in Babel – explore the power of language and the way different languages shape the reality of the speaker. In Taipei Story, Lily specifically references the short story “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang (which later became the movie Arrival), which takes this idea to another level. But this reference feels more like lampshading than anything. A way for Kuang to reintroduce this idea without referring to her own novel which explored similar territory. While Lily may be surprised at her new understanding of the power of language to shape reality there are no great new revelations for readers, particularly those who have read either Chiang or Babel.
Kuang’s recent output overall seems stuck on reflecting her academic and publishing experiences. This has been interesting when she was essentially riffing on these ideas and experiences in a heightened comic (Yellowface) or fantasy (Babel, Katabasis) mode. But Taipei Story just feels like more of the same only less interesting. The main character is fairly bland and mainly passive. And the bulk of the narrative, while evocative of the place, more often than not feels more like a Taiwan travel guide than a novel.
Taipei Story by Rebecca F Kuang
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