Taiwan in Time: Carrying Taiwan’s stage to Singapore

Composer and producer Chi Li-nan went from a struggling traveling troupe to an international career, penning more than 1,000 songs

• By Han Cheung / Contributing reporter

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Sept. 28 to Oct. 4

Opening in 1971, Singapore’s Wisma Theatre (海燕歌劇院) was entirely modeled after Taiwanese live variety shows, combining singing, dancing and drama. Even its performers were recruited from Taiwan. The formula was an instant hit, selling out on the third night with the crowd fighting outside for tickets.

Among its key figures was 31-year-old Chi Li-nan (紀利男), an acclaimed saxophonist and band leader who had entered Taiwan’s live entertainment scene at age 19 with zero musical training.

The nine-person group of Chi Li-nan (fourth from left) served as the first house band for Singapore’s Wisma Theatre in 1971.

Photo courtesy of Taiwan Music Institute

Chi wasn’t even supposed to be there. He had accompanied his girlfriend, pop singer Shang Kuan Ping (上官萍), to negotiations with Wisma’s agent. He casually remarked, “You’re recruiting so many singers, why don’t you recruit musicians too?” The agent, who had recognized Chi from his live performances, surprisingly agreed, and the couple ended up heading to Singapore together.

Upon arriving, Chi noticed that the stage was poorly designed and persuaded the owners to rebuild it, delaying opening for a month. He then saved the first show from disaster with quick thinking and held a meeting that night to establish protocol for future performances. Three months later, he was promoted to the theater’s musical director and programmer.

A year later, Chi tried his hand at composing. His first song, Regret Loving You (後悔愛上你), was a huge success, with Teresa Teng (鄧麗君) among the singers who recorded it. Chi would go on to become better known as a songwriter and producer, creating more than 1,000 songs and numerous hits.

Chi Li-nan, left, poses with his mentor Yang San-lang in 1979 after winning silver in Japan’s Koga Awards.

Photo courtesy of Taiwan Music Institute

JOINING THE GOLDEN CATS

Chi was born in 1940 in Shuinan Village (水南) Yunlin County, where his grandfather started out poor but became the area’s largest sugarcane grower. By the time Chi was in elementary school, however, the family had lost their fortune to land reform and bad deals.

Chi was expelled from high school in Chiayi after a physical altercation with a teacher, he recalls in his memoir, Life in Music (音樂人生). Afraid to go home, he wandered the streets for a while before heading to Taipei to find his father, who worked as a firetruck driver.

Chi Li-nan’s new band after he returned to Singapore in 1987.

Photo courtesy of Taiwan Music Institute

Chi was interested in the music industry, as he had been an avid listener since childhood, particularly enamored with the songs of Japanese crooner Hibari Misora. His father connected him with pop singer Chi Lu-hsia (紀露霞, no relation), who introduced him to acclaimed composer Yang San-lang (楊三郎).

Yang had just sold his popular Black Cat Song and Dance Troupe (黑貓歌舞團) and was preparing to form the Golden Cat troupe with younger, trendier performers. He immediately took Chi in as a disciple.

Learning vocal techniques from Yang while helping out with the troupe, Chi took the stage a month later. The 30-plus-member troupe traveled around Taiwan, staying about 10 days in each town. The show consisted of an hour of singing and dancing, and an hour of musical drama.

Chi Li-nan learned to play the drums after most of the musicians in the Golden Cat Troupe quit.

Photo courtesy of Taiwan Music Institute

FALL AND RISE

After about eight months, Chi expressed an interest in musical arranging. Yang wanted him to focus on singing first, but after being impressed by the work Chi did in his free time, he began teaching him music theory. Chi could not afford an instrument, but Yang happened to have a saxophone that one of his students had sold to a pawn shop without his knowledge. Chi Lu-hsia gave Chi the money to buy it back, and it became his main instrument.

Yang taught Chi every night after performances, and Chi recalls asking exhaustive questions because he needed to understand everything thoroughly. The two often argued, but Yang remained patient and recognized his talent.

Two years later, the troupe had fallen on hard times. Audiences preferred the more experienced Black Cats and their bigger-name performers, and eventually all the musicians quit, leaving only Yang and Chi. The Golden Cats eventually disbanded.

The two worked at a Taichung nightclub before joining the Black Cats for a short period. They eventually found themselves playing in bars and sharing a small borrowed room. Chi recalls seeing Yang cry for the first time, saddened that despite his fame and talent, he had been reduced to such a life.

Yang later moved to Taipei and became one of the scene’s most in-demand saxophone players, known for his improvisational ability. He met Shang Kuan through work, and the two began dating.

SONGWRITING

In 1970, Singaporean entrepreneur Wang Te-nan (王德南) visited Taiwan and was impressed by its live entertainment scene. He established Wisma Theatre in a building leased for 10 years from the Indonesian Embassy, and began recruiting performers from Taiwan.

Chi brought his own nine-person band, and helped guide the theater to quick success.

He and Shang Kuan married in 1972. That year, Chi tried his hand at songwriting for a Wisma compilation album. Regret Loving You was originally written for singer Hung Yen-ping (洪燕萍), but Life Records (麗風唱片) artist Yang Hsiao-ping (楊小萍) heard someone humming it backstage and decided to record it as well. During production in Hong Kong, a 19-year-old Teresa Teng heard the song and recorded it too.

Chi initially struggled with his next compositions, which Life Records considered “too artistic.” But he soon grasped the nuances of pop-writing with Shang Kuan’s help. His next major hit was the 1976 Sunset Again for Yu Tien (余天).

Other notable works included A Boat in the Vast Ocean (汪洋中的一條船), based on the story of Cheng Feng-hsi (鄭豐喜), who overcame physical disability to earn a law degree, and a rearrangement of Plum Blossom (梅花) into a military march commissioned by general Chiang Wei-kuo (蔣緯國).

PROLIFIC PRODUCER

In 1978, Chi decided to test the Japanese market. Through Yang’s connections, he became the first foreigner to join the Japan Composer’s Association. A year later, he won a silver medal at the Koga Awards with First Love (初戀).

Wisma closed in 1981, and Chi returned to Taiwan while visiting Taiwan monthly in an attempt to break into the industry. He also continued working with Taiwanese and Hong Kong artists, notably penning 11 songs for Liza Wang (汪明荃), including Hot Coffee (熱咖啡).

But the Japanese market proved difficult and he abandoned the effort after seven years. Chi recalled struggling to get major stars to sing his songs — though he was too stubborn to give them to lesser-known singers. He recalled that the sign to give up was when a friend of Misora, his childhood idol, promised to introduce his songs to the singer but died before it could happen.

After seeing CD technology in Japan, Chi recorded an album with Shang Kuan on vocals in 1984 — at a time when no producer in Taiwan was familiar with the technology and the couple didn’t even have the means to play it at home.

Back in Taiwan, record companies considered Chi’s music “too progressive,” prompting him to move his family to Singapore and start his own production company. He found renewed success there. In 1992, he staged a Wisma reunion concert and even ran the New Wisma Theatre for a year.

He had wanted to produce a greatest-hits album for Yang, but Yang died in 1989 before the project could begin. Chi eventually enlisted singer Chen Fen-lan (陳芬蘭) and a Chinese orchestra to record 10 of Yang’s Taiwanese songs. The album won Best Record at the Golden Tripod Awards.

During the 2000s, Chi focused on producing audiophile recordings with well-known singers and Buddhist pop music. He continued recording until about 10 months before his death from a liver tumor on Oct. 4, 2016.

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.