Tân Ta̍t-lû

Chen Ta-ju (; 10 February 1917 – 24 October 1992), also known by his style name Fa Sheng , was a Taiwanese pop song lyricist born in , Taipei.

He wrote about 300 lyrics in his lifetime, and his masterpieces include , , "Bitter Heart" , "Youthful Sorrows and Joys" , "Farewell by the Harbor" , and . For his achievements, he was awarded the Special Prize of the 1st Golden Melody Awards in 1989.

Biography

Early life Chen Ta-ju was born near the Bangka Qingshui Temple in , Taipei during the Japanese rule in Taiwan. He received a Japanese education at a "public school" (kōgakkō), while his father also arranged for him to study Taiwanese Chinese at a private school. At that time, students in "public schools" would be severely reprimanded if caught speaking anything other than Japanese by their Japanese teachers. If they dared to talk back, they could even be slapped. As a teenager, Chen was deeply aggrieved by the way Taiwanese people were bullied. He decided to diligently study Chinese every evening, a commitment he sustained for three years.

Join Victor records In 1930s Taiwan, under the active promotion and guidance of Columbia Records, Taihei , In 1935, JVC hired Chang Fu-hsing, a graduate of the Ueno School of Music in Tokyo (the predecessor of the present-day Tokyo University of the Arts), to head the literature and art department, and invited , a graduate of medical school at the time and known as "songwriter physician," to write and select the lyrics for their records. After careful examination, Lin Ching-yueh considered that the young man's lyrics already possessed the style of a master, so he adopted them one by one and assigned them to and to compose the music respectively. By 1936, Chen had composed more than two-thirds of all the songs on Victor Records, "Spring Day by Day", or even "Shadow of Two Wild Geese", "Sending Out the Sails", "Sentimental Heart", "The Wine Cup of Sadness", etc., all of these songs created a sensation in Taiwan at that time. Chen was just 20 years old at the time.

There were many composers with whom Chen Ta-ju collaborated with besides Su Tung. There were also "We Don't Know", "Heart of the world", "Farewell by the Harbor", Chen Chiu-lin's "White Peony", "Spring Color in the Mountains", "Seven Pendulums of the Zhongshan North Road", and "Southern Nocturne". They collaborated in the creation of Taiwan's creative industry. Their collaborations created a new landscape of songwriting in Taiwan. Chen Ta-ju evacuated his family to Pinglin

Post-War Development

After the end of World War II, all industries were in recession. As a man of letters, it was not easy to find a job, but he could not abandon his family's livelihood, so Chen Ta-ju could only return to his old profession and write lyrics again. At that time, the circulation of songs relied on radio broadcasts and singing with singers in temple towns and squares, Chen published songbooks in the name of the "New Taiwan Song and Ballad Society", to sing and promote these songbooks by singing with drug troupes and singing troupes all over Taiwan. A total of more than ten books were published, and although their income was limited, they were able to make a good living.

In the 1950s, Taiwanese songs were on the decline. The reason for this was that, on the one hand, the Kuomintang regime was pushing Mandarin Chinese over the native Hokkien and Hakka, and Mandarin songs gradually monopolized the record market. On the other hand, most of the Taiwanese ballads from the Japanese rule era were banned from broadcasting by the government because they were considered to be too melancholy. serving as a manager of Ajinomoto Foods, a senior consultant for Ajinomoto, and a vice president of Ajinomoto, before retiring as vice president of Chen-feng Refrigeration Company, a subsidiary of Chen-feng Wen-hsiang Foods (a producer of Tzu-mu brand baby food).