Three Tune Tuesdays from Taiwan

I've seen ThreeTunesTuesdays #TTT hosted by @ablaze around for a long time but never took part in it. My recent trip to Taiwan has inspired me to share a few songs about my journey there.

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The Alishan young girl

Alishan is one of Taiwan's most famous tourist location, and I went there for the first time during my recent trip. The area is a beautiful national park famous for, amongst things, the sunset, sea of clouds, and railway. Here's a taster for you which will be the subject of a future post.

Back to TTT. 1949 was turbulent times for Taiwan. The Nationalist Party retreated from China to Taiwan when they lost the Civil War to the Communists. Around the same time, a film was being made in Taiwan and one of the theme songs the Alishan young girl became very popular in both Taiwan and China in subsequent years. The song is about the beauty of the young girl from Alishan and the indigenous tribe. To many in mainland China, it represented their impression of Taiwan as they were not allowed to go there until many decades later.

The song sounds dated, as expected, as it is well over 70 years. The only thing that hasn't changed since then, is the relationship between China and Taiwan.

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Days without cigarettes

Another song from Taiwan but related to China, something that many people don't know. The song is composed and performed by Tom Chang, a well known singer and music producer who died in a car accident aged 31 in 1997.

The lyrics was a prose written by Wang Dan, a prominent activist in China during the Tiananmen 4th June Massacre in 1989. Wang was a heavy smoker, and he wrote the prose during those turbulent times, to imagine how he would feel if he couldn't smoke. A little later, that became reality when he was jailed for taking part in the 4th June protest. When Tom Chang came across the prose, he was so moved by it and composed a song that became very popular in the Chinese speaking world, including China. Because of Wang's situation, no one in China knew he wrote the lyrics. When Wang was released from prison, Tom Chang went to China to visit Wang, and gave him USD4000, being the royalties for the song. That was the first and last time the two men met as Tom died a few years later.

This is the original version sang by Tom Chang. It's a very moving song in the sense that one can feel how helpless a person is, as reflected in the lyrics in the chorus

If you don't have a cigarette in your hand, strike a match.
to smoke your helplessness

I've added a rap version by Namewee a popular rapper from Malaysia. It's about smoking in his life and also pays tribute to Tom Chang. Let me know which version you like best out of the two.

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Good night song

And finally,the last song I want to share with you is the Good night song. I met up with one of my oldest Hive friend @deanliu when I was back in Taiwan. We spent the whole afternoon in a café catching up on Hive and life. When the café was about to close, Dean suddenly asked me if I knew the song they were playing through the speaker. It was a very gentle song, sang by a guy.

Turns out this is called the Good Night song and is about, well ..... saying good night. The song is performed by Fei Yu-Ching, I've heard of the name before but not the song. Fei is a well know TV host and singer in the 70s till he retired a couple of years ago. In the old days, TV broadcast wasn't 24 hours, and when they finish for the day, the TV station would play this Good Night song to round off the day. Then many shops and restaurants adopted the same practice, playing the song as they were about to close as a cue for customers to leave. And with that, brought my meet-up with Dean to an end that day.