30 Facts About Chen Ming-chang

Chen Ming-chang is a Taiwanese folk singer, guitarist, Taiwanese yueqin player, composer, and producer born in Beitou.

Chen Ming-chang is known for writing scores for the Hou Hsiao-Hsien films Dust in the Wind and The Puppetmaster, as well as for songs such as "She Is Our Darling" and "Wandering to Tamsui".

Chen Ming-chang is stylistically known for singing primarily in Taiwanese Hokkien, incorporating traditional styles and instruments into his music, as well as songs that represent the Taiwanese underclass.

Chen Ming-chang was born in 1956 in Beitou Village, Yangmingshan Administrative Bureau.

Chen Ming-chang was not very studious and in 1972, he was admitted to Fuxing Senior High School in Beitou and played first base for the high school team.

Chen Ming-chang dreamed of going to the United States to play in the MLB.

Chen Ming-chang began to experiment with Western-style music and joined his school's guitar club.

In 1982, at age 26, Chen Ming-chang's father suffered from a stroke, and he went back to Beitou to help take care of him as well as help his mother run their jewelry store.

Two years later, when his younger brother finished his military service, Chen Ming-chang decided he would try his hand at music again.

Since Taiwan was still under martial law at the time, Chen Ming-chang's parents had never mentioned it to him.

Not long after, Chen Ming-chang collaborated with Chen Ming-yu and wrote his first Taiwanese language song, "The Chinese Cross to Taiwan", a folk song about how early Chinese settlers had first crossed the Taiwan Strait by boat.

Chen Ming-chang employed more traditional Taiwanese sounds such as the pentatonic scale.

Hou would ask Chen Ming-chang to write the score for The Puppetmaster in 1993, for which he won the award for best score at the Film Fest Gent in Belgium.

At the time, Chen Ming-chang was working as a manufacturing assistant at Four Seas Records along with Wang Ming-hui, Chen Chu-hui and Lin Wei-je, where they talked about working on something themselves.

In 1990, Chen Ming-chang's music began to grow in popularity.

Chen Ming-chang released two albums that year: Live Works 1 and An Afternoon Drama, and Live Works 2 in the following year.

In 1992, after an island-wide tour of college campuses, Chen Ming-chang took a break from his solo career to write music for The Puppetmaster and other films.

Chen Ming-chang felt that his music had become tired, and that it was easier to write film scores since the ideas were already in place.

That year, he suffered a spinal injury, which Chen Ming-chang has attributed to his alcohol use.

Chen Ming-chang had long seen alcohol as a source of creative inspiration, drinking late into the night while working and not rising until the afternoon.

Chen Ming-chang founded a musical group called the Danshui Wandering Minstrels in 1997.

The members of the band all had day jobs: the guitarist A-Chang was a judicial scrivener, bassist Steve was an American lawyer, the drummer Little Huang was a manager at a medicine factory, Huai-yi worked in advertising, and Chen Ming-chang was growing orchids.

In 2009, Chen Ming-chang founded the Taiwanese Yueqin Folksong Association, which has hosted an annual four-week yueqin folk song festival at the Beitou Hot Springs Museum during the Mid-Autumn Festival since 2011.

Chen Ming-chang wrote the score for the Zero Chou film Ripples of Desire in 2012, which prominently features the Taiwanese yueqin.

Chen Ming-chang's music was deeply influenced by that of Chen Da, a Taiwanese folk singer from Hengchun.

In particular, it was Chen Da's music that caused Chen Ming-chang to decide to primary sing in Taiwanese Hokkien, his mother tongue.

Chen Ming-chang has cited influences from various traditional operas, such as Taiwanese opera, which his father would often take him to see as a child.

Chen Ming-chang has been cited for inventing a style of guitar playing that mimicked the sounds of the beiguan, nanguan and Taiwanese yueqin.

Chen Ming-chang has cited aboriginal influences in his music from when he spent time in aboriginal villages in Taitung and Hualien.

Chen Ming-chang's music was influence from seeing Nakasi performers in neighboring Beitou hotels starting at an early age, as well as the open air theater performances his grandfather would take him to see.