Taiwan Travelogue (臺灣漫遊錄), which earlier this week became the first Taiwanese novel to win the International Booker Prize, is to be adapted into a television series through a Taiwan-Japan coproduction, producer Chang Chen-yu (張辰漁) said yesterday.
Chang, a producer at World Softest Production Film Co, wrote on Facebook that the company had been searching for projects with international appeal that retain a strong Taiwanese identity after colleagues and Japanese partners strongly recommended the novel.
After reading the book, Chang said he immediately decided to pursue the screen rights.
Photo: Wang Shan-yen, Taipei Times
“A great story has the power to transcend time and borders, and connect countless people,” Chang said, without providing further production details.
Published in 2020, Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-zi (楊?子) is a work of historical fiction set in 1938 during the Japanese colonial era.
The novel follows the journey of a Taiwanese woman and a Japanese woman traveling across Taiwan by railway while exploring themes of identity, empire and cultural exchange.
Chang described the novel as having a “layered narrative,” blending a sensory journey through 1930s Taiwan — including railways and food — with deeper reflections on language, colonial power and cultural interpretation.
“The relationship between the two protagonists is not simply romantic,” Chang said. “It also reflects the subtle dynamics between colonizer and colonized through repeated acts of translation and mistranslation.”
Given the story’s multilingual setting and international themes, Chang said the production team hopes to collaborate with partners around the world to bring different versions of Taiwan Travelogue to wider audiences.
Japanese writer Hikari Sumiki also voiced support for the adaptation on Facebook, saying it was exciting to imagine the novel becoming “a starting point for travelers from around the world to explore Taiwan.”
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-ching (林宜敬) yesterday cited regulatory issues and national security concerns as an expert said that Taiwan is among the few Asian regions without Starlink. Lin made the remarks on Facebook after funP Innovation Group chief executive officer Nathan Chiu (邱繼弘) on Friday said Taiwan and four other countries in Asia — China, North Korea, Afghanistan and Syria — have no access to Starlink. Starlink has become available in 166 countries worldwide, including Ukraine, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, in the six years since it became commercial, he said. While China and North Korea block Starlink, Syria is not
GROUNDED: A KMT lawmaker proposed eliminating drone development programs and freezing funding for counterdrone systems, despite China’s adoption of the technology China has deployed attack drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait in a strategy aimed at overwhelming Taiwan’s air defense systems through saturation attacks, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s latest quarterly report on China said that satellite imagery and open-source intelligence indicate that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had converted retired J-6 fighter jets into J-6W drones, which the PLA has stationed at six air bases near Taiwan, five in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province. The report cited J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at the US-based Mitchell Institute, as saying that China has
RSS