300-Year-Old Formosan Rap:

Sabrina Woo and Taiwanese Chant-Song

Esther Tseng　/　photos Kent Chuang　/　tr. by Phil Newell

May 2026

中文

In earlier days Taiwanese thought of traditional chant-song as a form of entertainment, but for Sabrina Woo it is an art form that constitutes a key element in Taiwan’s culture.

Accompanying herself on a yueqin (two-stringed “moon lute”), Sabrina Woo (Woo Yuti), director of Yuti Nian Ge Chuanchang Yishutuan (Yuti Chant-Song Traditional Arts Troupe), softly articulates a “song of exhortation” in the Jianghu style. This is Taiwanese “chant-song” (liām-kua in Taiwanese, niàn gē in Mandarin), an art form that dates back hundreds of years.

This virtually lost art has taken on a whole new life thanks to Woo.

Sabrina Woo is the founder of Taiwan’s first ever Taiwanese chant-song studio. It is located in a quiet back street in Jiaoxi, Yilan County.

What is Taiwanese chant-song?

Chant-song is a half-spoken, half-sung performance art traditional to Taiwan. A storytelling genre, it comes in many forms, the most common of which is end-rhyming quatrains with seven characters per line. It can be considered a kind of “Taiwanese rap” dating back 300 years.

Sabrina Woo’s Taiwanese chant-song studio also functions as a coffee shop and a cultural base for the promotion of chant-song.

coffee shop shows other decorative works handmade by local senior citizens.

A student of Yang Xiuqing

Woo, who joined the Lan-Yang Taiwanese Opera Company at age 17, remarks: “My teachers were all national treasures. But the only one I formally recognized as my master was Yang Xiuqing. It was destiny.” In November of 2020, Woo formally became a disciple of Yang, the winner of a National Award for Arts in 2007.

The apprenticeship ceremony involved first paying respects to the patron deity of theater and opera, then paying respects three times to Yang. Woo recalls that Yang said on that day: “I didn’t sleep last night; I’m just very tense.” So even a national-treasure-level master felt the weight of transmitting this heritage!

Chant-song national treasure Yang Xiuqing

Yang Xiuqing’s chant-song style was unique. She played multiple roles and told complete stories in quatrains (four-line rhyming stanzas). She also used as many as 200 or 300 Taiwanese Opera tunes.

From learning the techniques to mastering the skills, Woo has always felt that the soul of Taiwanese chant-song lies in its “freedom.” Although there are fixed scripts, performers change the content depending upon audience reactions.

Sabrina Woo has collected all manner of traditional Taiwanese songbooks.

Many chant-song works built on four-line rhyming stanzas have an exhortatory or edifying purpose.

Sabrina Woo’s Taiwanese chant-song studio provides a venue for community activities. The photo shows a wall decoration composed of yueqin (two-stringed “moon lutes”) hand-drawn by community elders.

The evolution of chant-song

“It was only by studying with Master Yang that I learned the context of chant-song. In earlier days, before there was Taiwanese Opera, chant-song was the most common form of entertainment.”

Take for instance this call-and-response tea-picking song made up of quatrains (four-line rhyming stanzas) of seven-character lines: “Coming to the tea mountain to pick leaves / The young girl’s head hangs low as she picks / No one knows the pain inside her heart….” Another example is the “Beach Seine Song” of coastal Yilan.

Quatrains were found widely in daily life. “Even temple fortune poems use quatrains,” Woo says with a laugh. People in the past were largely illiterate, but could recite chant-songs, and even insults were based on quatrains. A famous publisher of traditional Taiwanese songbooks from Hsinchu, whose work is still studied by students of Taiwanese Hokkien, was illiterate but could recite four-line stanzas.

The two-stringed yueqin is the classic accompaniment instrument for Taiwanese chant-song.

This bowed bass chordophone known as a daguangxian is an other important instrument for accompanying chant-song.

Lighting the flame of tradition

For art to survive, it has to become part of people’s lives. This is why Woo formed her chant-song performance company—to bring this art form out of temples and into theaters and corporate events. Planet Technology Corporation has even been funding Woo to teach her craft in elementary schools in Yilan since 2024.

Chen Yen-chu, a teacher at Guting Elementary School in Yilan’s Zhuangwei Township, reports that kids in the chant-song class not only enjoy themselves, they even learn exhortatory or edifying songs on their own initiative. Moreover, by playing the yueqin and chant-singing, they renew their knowledge of their Taiwanese Hokkien mother tongue.

Students of Woo’s who have gone to study in Europe have brought their yueqin along to share this special Taiwanese art form with foreign friends. Also, a Japanese national who is a long-term resident in Taiwan has come to learn the art, and his wife brought along a sanshin (Okinawan three-stringed lute) for some cross-cultural improvisation.

Sabrina Woo concludes: “I hope that one day, when someone mentions ‘the voice of Taiwan,’ the first thing people think of will be chant-song.”

There are three basic styles of chant-song: Jianghu, seven-character, and mixed chant-melody. There are many lyrics that can be sung in any of these styles.

Woo performs at many venues to promote Taiwanese chant-song. This photo was taken at the Sinphar Yilan Marathon banquet in 2026.

When Sabrina Woo performs, she normally chant-sings “Riding a White Horse.” Many people do not know that this format is known as a “seven-character” tune.

Children in the chant-song class at Guting Elementary School are shown here playing and singing a classic Taiwanese song of exhortation (a kind of moral ballad).