Taiwan Travelogue — CHAPTER III

1. 1. The narrator, Aoyama-sensei, visits Shōka, experiencing local street food and reflecting on the city's historical transformation from Qing rule through the Taishō era.
2. 2. Aoyama-sensei's acclaimed novel and film, *A Record of Youth*, depicts a girl born into wealth who is abandoned due to a difficult birth, eventually finding solace and a career in literature despite hardship.
3. 3. During a tearoom visit in Shōka, Chi-chan, the narrator's interpreter, is subjected to public humiliation by her distant relatives, who refer to her with the pejorative 'grew up on jute soup'.
4. 4. Chi-chan's family, the Ō family, is a wealthy and influential 'ancestral pioneer family' in Taiwan, which pledged loyalty to the Empire when Japan received the island.
5. 5. As the daughter of a concubine, Chi-chan faced neglect and was sent to live with her mother's poor jute-farming family, leading to the 'jute soup' insult.
6. 6. Chi-chan reveals she is engaged in an arranged marriage to a 'modern' Mainland-educated man, a partnership orchestrated by her father and sister for business ties and to secure a better fate for her.
7. 7. Chi-chan observes that for women, arranged marriages are often a practical acceptance of a singular path, unlike some 'modern' men who might abandon their wives after the wedding.
8. 8. Chi-chan's true ambition, discovered by Aoyama-sensei, is to become a professional translator of novels, a passion evident in her skilled, vivid translation of a Han-language fantasy story.
9. 9. The labor-intensive process of making *muâ-ínn-thng* (jute soup), a traditional 'poor people's food,' is revealed to be surprisingly complex and time-consuming, requiring significant skill.
10. 10. Chi-chan clarifies she initially refused to dine one-on-one with Aoyama-sensei due to traditional social expectations for subordinate staff, but agrees once Aoyama acknowledges their friendship as equals.