Sun, Jan 18, 2026 page12

• Taiwan in Time: The forgotten architect of Taiwanese pop

  As head of Columbia Records’ arts department, Chen Chun-yu assembled the all-star team that shaped Taiwan’s 1930s music scene — and contributed lyrics himself

  • By Han Cheung / Contributing reporter
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  Jan. 19 to Jan. 25

  In 1933, an all-star team of musicians and lyricists began shaping a new sound. The person who brought them together was Chen Chun-yu (陳君玉), head of Columbia Records’ arts department. Tasked with creating Taiwanese “pop music,” they released hit after hit that year, with Chen contributing lyrics to several of the songs himself.

  Many figures from that group, including composer Teng Yu-hsien (鄧雨賢), vocalist Chun-chun (純純, Sun-sun in Taiwanese) and lyricist Lee Lin-chiu (李臨秋) remain well-known today, particularly for the famous classic Longing for the Spring Breeze (望春風). Chen, however, is not a name that readily comes to mind while discussing that era.

  

  A later-life portrait of Chen Chun-yu, displayed at last year’s “The Dawn of Pop Music” exhibition at the Taipei Music Center.

  Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times

  But his songs endure. The best known is Dancing Age (跳舞時代), which opened with the line, “I’m a modern woman, I’m free to go east, west, north or south.” The song later lent its name and served as the theme song for the 2003 documentary Viva Tonal (跳舞時代), which won Best Documentary at that year’s Golden Horse Awards.

  Despite not finishing primary school, Chen became a respected and innovative figure in Taipei’s arts and literature scene throughout the 1930s. In 1956, he detailed that era in the journal Taipei Heritage (台北文物), an account still widely cited by researchers today.

  ITINERANT YOUTH

  

  The building on the left of this photo is Columbia Record’s Arts Department in Taipei during the Japanese colonial era.

  Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

  Chen was born in 1906 to a poor family in Taipei’s Dadaocheng area. Historian Chuang Yung-ming (莊永明) writes that Chen dropped out of school at a young age and worked as a street vendor. He also spent some time with a traditional puppet troupe, which may have been his first introduction to music.

  As a teenager, Chen traveled to northeast China and worked as a typesetter at a Japanese-language newspaper. He taught himself Mandarin and improved his Chinese reading and writing abilities. The New Culture Movement was taking place in China, part of which advocated for vernacular language in literature over classical forms.

  Around age 20, Chen returned to Taiwan and continued working as a typesetter. The Japanese colony was experiencing its own New Literature Movement, where cultural activists sought to reinforce Han Taiwanese culture and identity as a form of passive resistance to colonial rule.

  

  The record for Dancing Age, released in 1933.

  Photo courtesy of Taiwan Culture Memory Bank

  Chen began submitting poems and fiction, writes Shih Ching-an (施慶安) in “Chen Chun-yu and Taiwanese popular music under Japanese Rule” (陳君玉與日治時期臺灣的流行音樂). Among his early published works was a romance novel set in a printing factory.

  ALL-STAR POP TEAM

  As industry competition intensified during the early 1930, Columbia Records’ Taiwan director Shojiro Kashino set out to create a new form of Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) music employing Western instrumentation and composition styles. In 1931, the label released March of the Black Cats (烏貓行進曲) the first song explicitly labeled a “pop song” (see “Taiwan in Time: Taiwan’s first pop song?” March 9, 2025).

  

  The record for Anping Ballad, released in 1939.

  Photo courtesy of Taiwan Culture Memory Bank

  The following year, Columbia scored its first major hit with The Peach Girl (桃花泣血記), sung by Chun-chun, often regarded as Taiwan’s first pop star. By early 1933, Kashino decided to fully commit to this new genre.

  Shih writes that Chen had been commissioned to pen a few songs for the label, but they were never released. Nevertheless, he was selected to head the newly established arts department.

  Chen moved quickly. He poached former public school music teacher Teng Yu-hsien from rival Wensheng Records, brought in former preacher Yao Tsan-fu (姚讚福) and enlisted Su Tung (蘇桐), a traditional opera musician employed by Columbia. They became the label’s principal composers and were also responsible for training the singers.

  

  Chen Chun-yu’s writing desk is displayed at last year’s “The Dawn of Pop Music” exhibition at the Taipei Music center.

  Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times

  Chen also invited the respected doctor-singer Lin Ching-yue (林清月) to join, along with a number of lyricists in their 20s and 30s, including Chou Tian-wang (周添旺) and Liao Han-chen (廖漢臣). Lee Lin-chiu (李臨秋), who already worked for the label, also contributed.

  Vocalists included former Taiwanese opera star Chun-chun, the classically-trained Lin Shih-hao (林氏好) and Peking opera performer Ching Chun Mei (青春美). They recorded a few dozen songs that year, several of them still well-known today. Chen’s Dancing Age stood out for abandoning the “black cat” label to describe fashionable, socially active women, instead simply referring to them as “modern women.”

  Chen’s tenure at Columbia only lasted a year, although he continued to write songs for them. Notable works include Moonlight Flower Drum (觀月花鼓), which included in the record sleeve dance steps for what was then the trendiest “flower drum” routine, and Anping Ballad (安平小調), an experimental song about a supernatural romance at the old Anping Fort.

  LATER YEARS

  In 1934, tea merchant Kuo Po-jung (郭博容) recruited Chen to head the arts department at the new Popular Records. He later also held the same position at the Taika and Nitto labels. In 1936, Chen joined a movement to revamp traditional Han Taiwanese music. Together with composer Chen Chiu-lin (陳秋霖), he modified a nanguan-style pipa, hand-crafting a larger version to serve as a bass. The group later staged a concert using a variety of newly devised instruments at the Taipei Radio Station.

  Aside from music, Chen remained active in the literature scene. In 1934, he co-founded the Taiwan Literature and Arts Association (台灣文藝協會) with Liao Han-chen and published an essay outlining his hopes for Taiwanese pop music in the association magazine, Striking Team (先發部隊). In it, he emphasized the social responsibility of popular songs, urged writers to “beautify the hearts” of Taiwanese people rather than producing vulgar material solely to sell records.

  The Taiwanese pop industry came to a screeching halt as the Japanese authorities clamped down on local culture during World War II.

  “Some writers just could not abandon their craft,” Chen wrote in 1956. “With nowhere to apply their talents, they went to tea parlors and taught waitresses how to sing their new songs. But without the support of record labels, and at a time when everyone was required to speak Japanese, these songs could never become popular.”

  To survive, Chen began teaching Mandarin, as translators were in demand for Japan’s war with China. He continued in the field after the war, but went out of business following the government’s push for Mandarin-language education in 1951. In his later years, he worked as a teacher, translated fairy tales for children’s publications and raised chickens. Chen died in 1963 from liver cancer.

  Taiwan in Time, a column about Taiwan’s history that is published every Sunday, spotlights important or interesting events around the nation that either have anniversaries this week or are tied to current events.
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