Department of Cultural Affairs

The Writing Taipei Annual Book Award, set up by Taipei City Government’s Department of Cultural Affairs, showcases books that capture the heartbeat and echoes of the city.

This year’s theme, “Only Writing, No Final Chapter,” suggests that, through words, Taipei is always in motion. The scent of alleyways, the flow of rivers, the quiet glimmers between people all come back into view when written down. Each author revisits the city in a distinct voice, preserving its memories and reimagining its form, allowing Taipei to remain a city that grows through stories.

Drawing on Strange Tales (聊齋) and on personal history, Tales of Seven Stars (七星物語) calls forth spirits through language, bringing together inner experience and outer landscape, threading them through the space between life and death, while quietly conjuring a realm where the visible and the unseen meet. In doing so, it suggests that ghosts and otherworldly beings, however strange, remain inseparable from the full spectrum of human longing and emotion. When feeling grows so intense that it extends beyond the body and settles upon buildings and everyday objects, it becomes a heightened expression of a delicate awareness of transience.

From the underworld to Qixing Mountain, from tourist sites to spaces of longing, the land itself proves rich with stories. Through the sulfurous, rising mists of Beitou, surface traces transform into inner landscapes, elevating Beitou from an administrative district into a spiritual labyrinth.

Through a description of the seemingly simple act of eating, Kuo-chih Shu observes life and writes about the city. His unmistakable prose style, attentive eye, and philosophy of life return to the plain and essential path of food. Both writing and writer embody a particular aspect of the contemporary Taipei resident. One might even say that Kuo-chih Shu himself has become part of the fabric of the city.

More than just a study of food culture, another featured title, The Voyage of Flavors (味道的航線), is a voyage of memory across the sea. Based on his journeys to Matsu, Taipei, Fuzhou, and other parts of Southeast Asia, Kai-yang Huang carefully traces the historical roots and modern evolution of Eastern Min cuisine. Using “routes” as a guiding thread, the book connects migration, cultural exchange, and culinary innovation, allowing the reader to sense the emotional depth of each dish. In Taipei, a crossroads of diverse cultures, Fuzhou and Matsu cuisines once flourished but have gradually faded from view. Through meticulous interviews and lyrical writing, the author records the past and present of restaurants and street vendors, awakening collective memories of vanishing flavors. 

The Voyage of Flavors (味道的航線) reveals food as a force of identity and cultural inheritance, showing how immigrant families sustain the emotions of their homelands at the dining table. More than a culinary guide, it reads as an anthropological study of food, weaving history, geography, and human stories into every dish. It reminds us that taste is among the gentlest, yet most profound, forms of cultural memory.

On weekends, Taipei’s riverside bike paths bustle with cyclists, walkers, photographers, children playing with balls, and birdwatchers. These lively scenes unfold along Xindian, Keelung, and Dahan Rivers, most of which flow through Taoyuan and New Taipei before converging into Tamsui River, the capital’s major artery.

From the early Qing period, when Lai-chang Chen petitioned to reclaim and develop vast tracts of what is now Greater Taipei, to the completion of the Liugong Canal irrigation works, the region relied on the waters of the Tamsui River system to sustain its agriculture. With this network of irrigation, Greater Taipei was once Taiwan’s second largest rice-producing area, surpassed only by Jianan Plain. As time passed, this river accumulated far more stories than most people ever knew. 

Although modern urban life has gradually distanced residents from the river, Taipei’s growth has always remained inseparable from it. This book, A City’s River (島都之河), invites readers to reconsider the river from multiple perspectives—history, economic contribution, governance, and transformation—while reflecting on its role as a life sustaining presence that continues to provide the city’s drinking water. As the saying goes, “When you drink water, remember its source.” In this sense, reading the book in itself becomes an act of remembrance.

Amid the flourishing landscape of “Taiwan writing” in recent years, adding another title may not be difficult, but forging a distinctive voice is. The author of Strolling Through Taiwanese Art: An Art Detective’s Guide to the Era Behind the Masterpieces (漫步裏的台灣美術：藝術偵探帶路，繪見名畫裏的時代風景) carves out a solitary and original path, an effort that commands admiration and moves the reader.