Singer/songwriter Ricky Hsiao (蕭煌奇) is a multiple Golden Melody winner, crafting songs that have been a staple in the soundtrack of many people’s lives for more than two decades.
His songs can also serve as the score of his own life, which has seen the kind of ups and downs that a Hollywood scriptwriter can only dream about.
Hsiao, who turns 43 next month, was born with congenital cataracts that left him blind. Surgery when he was four gave him partial sight, but his vision gradually deteriorated until he was left totally blind again at the age of 15.
Photo: CNA
However, by then he was already a skilled athlete, playing basketball in school and training in judo, a sport where he eventually earned the rank of judoka, or second-level black belt. He was part of Taiwan’s judo team to the Far East and South Pacific Games for the Disabled in Beijing in 1994, where he won a bronze medal, and the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta, Georgia, before turning his attention to music.
Like many visually-impaired students in Taiwan, he was trained as a masseuse in high school, but Hsiao wanted more.
He released his first album in 2002, and has gone from strength to strength.
While he has released albums in both Mandarin and Hoko (also known as Taiwanese), his Golden Melody wins have all come with his Hoklo recordings: Best Taiwanese Album and Best Taiwanese Male Singer in 2008 for Love Songs (真情歌), the same again in 2010 for The Dreamer (愛作夢的人) and in 2015 for The Most Beautiful Flower (上水的花).
He also served as a judge on the TV talent show One Million Star (超級星光大道).
Although Hsiao released an autobiography several years ago, I See the Colors of Musical Notes (我看見音符的顏色), there is no film in the works — yet — but actress-turned-director Ismene Ting (丁乃箏) has worked with Hsiao to turn his life story into a musical theater production for Performance Workshop (表演工作坊), A Date With Me (遇見自己), which opens at the National Theater in Taipei tonight.
Ting, who has proven to have a deft hand with creating and directing comedies, has collaborated with musicians before.
In 2009, she worked with blind Taiwanese pianist Hsu Che-cheng (許哲誠) and US pianist John Vaughan to create Just Play It! (彈琴說愛), a fusion of Chinese stand-up with classical, blues and pop music. The show premiered in April 2010 and proved a popular hit in Taiwan and China, touring in both nations for several years.
Ting, Hsiao and the company are clearly hoping that A Date With Me proves equally successful.
■ Tonight and tomorrow at 7:30pm, Sunday at 2:30pm at National Theater (國家戲劇院), 21-1 Zhongshan S Rd, Taipei City (台北市中山南路21-1號)
■ Remaining tickets are NT$900 to NT$3,000, available at the NTCH box offices, Eslite ticket booths, online at www.artsticket.com and convenience store ticket kiosks
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
The latest Formosa poll released at the end of last month shows confidence in President William Lai (賴清德) plunged 8.1 percent, while satisfaction with the Lai administration fared worse with a drop of 8.5 percent. Those lacking confidence in Lai jumped by 6 percent and dissatisfaction in his administration spiked up 6.7 percent. Confidence in Lai is still strong at 48.6 percent, compared to 43 percent lacking confidence — but this is his worst result overall since he took office. For the first time, dissatisfaction with his administration surpassed satisfaction, 47.3 to 47.1 percent. Though statistically a tie, for most
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
RSS