Apple pie paves the way to French food and jazz

Her book Le Voyage Musique d'un Photographe was written over seven years and underwent about 30 revisions of the original work.

She trained in photography in college and images became a big part of her books. She also gave a year's jazz lessons to an art designer from Le Voyage Musique d'un Photographe so he would understand jazz better to design anything on the subject.

"To many writers, photos might not mean much. But to me, it is very important. Inside my images, there are many hidden messages," Pong says.

In the book Le Voyage Culinaire d'un Photographe she took all pictures by the light of only one candle. She wanted every image to tell a story - who was eating, at what time, what their moods were, what the ingredients were, and other information related to culture and geography. "I want all the elements to be condensed into one image."

Pong has published 11 books mainly on France's food culture and jazz. But each time she begins writing, book publishers in Taiwan would grow hesitant because of their perception that her topics were "too highbrow to be popular" locally.

"But oddly, readers always responded passionately," she says.

Zhang Weijun, an editor at the Central Compilation & Translation Press in Beijing, who worked on Pong's books, describes her as a very diverse writer, whose topics will please readers on China's mainland.

"People born in the 1980s and 1990s have grown up," he says. "This generation has better taste and seeks the delicate things in life more than their parents did."

Liu Fan, 21, a student who attended a recent lecture by Pong in Beijing, says that although her initial reason was to hear from Pong about her global journeys, it was Pong's temperament that most impressed Fan.

"She does everything to fight against restraint, to pursue her dreams ... That makes me ponder how much time I have wasted," Fan says.

Pong says she will write about her travels through China's mainland next year. But this year, she has a full schedule.

Her new book Women's Rooms is about portraits and interviews with women from different places on earth. An earlier book on the subject, called Her Story, was lauded by French magazine Marie Claire.