Tsai Chen-nan: What is in His Heart

Faced with Tsai Chen-nan's imminent "departure," his record company and some radio stations held a "going-away party." Matrons advised him to "have courage." Friends said, "we will bind you with sincere friendship so that you can't get away." And others consoled him: "Don't get depressed or upset. The sooner you go the sooner you'll be back. Take care of yourself for everybody, and come back with some new songs for us."

Before setting off on his "journey," everyone asked him to sing "Song of the Wanderer." Together they all sang "Hoping that the Man Returns Soon," as well as songs he feels best express his feelings now, like "Sunshine of Life," and "Nobody Knows What is in My Heart."

"If you don't say what's in your heart, who will know? /Sometimes you really want to speak out the tragedy that fills your breast/Entering into the underworld is not the right thing to do/But who will help you now even if you regret it? /My love, please understand and bear with me/It's not that men have no tears, but that they don't dare to cry."

"Nobody Knows What is in My Heart," written by Tsai and performed by Shen Wen-cheng, is the song that gave Tsai Chen-nan his first big success. The tune swept Taiwan back in 1982, and people were singing it on main streets and in back alleys. "People treated it like a 'national anthem.' Both the music and the lyrics touched a certain chord in their hearts," says Wu Nien-chen, the director of A Borrowed Life. For example, in his circle of friends they changed the words to "Entering into the film world is not the right thing to do." and they got a big kick out of singing it.

Eight months, one line of lyrics

"Nobody Knows" was the first time that people took note of Tsai Chen-nan, who was managing a hat factory in the countryside outside of Taichung. "Everybody thought that this guy had really gotten something rolling," says Hu Tai-li, a researcher at the Academia Sinica who also happens to be Tsai's aunt.

When Tsai wrote the song, he never expected it to become so popular.

Tsai says that the song was written about a friend of his who was imprisoned for being in a criminal gang. The friend had applied for leave from prison to visit his sick grandmother. When he was refused, he escaped from jail. When he was discovered and reincarcerated, his sentence was raised from five to 12 years. Over more than a decade, his friend, who was "always rather naive," had "gone brain-dead." Tsai felt very sorry for his friend, and so wrote this song.

"It took me a long time to write this song," recalls Tsai. He debated with himself for eight months over whether to use the term "underworld." "With that phrase in, the song became a song about gangsters, but without it, the feeling wasn't right," he explains. In the end he decided to leave it in, because he figured that the reason his friend ended up the way he did was because he lacked any real direction or backbone. "He wasn't criminal material, but still he got mixed up with them."

"Nobody Knows" made Tsai's fortune. But it wasn't until the soundtrack for Wu Nien-chen's film A Borrowed Life was released that people found out that Tsai could not only compose, he could also really sing.

The fact is, he began recording back in 1991. Do you remember the music for "Songs of Nostalgia"--the first production number of the then recently reformed Cloud Gate Dance Troupe. Besides "Nobody Knows," it included "I Shouldn't [Have Turned to a Life of Crime]" and "Cry of Lonely Little Bird." Well, that was Tsai Chen-nan, too.

Honest and straightforward

"You can hear in this guy's voice that he's been through a lot of pain, and also that he's a little melodramatic," suggests Lin Ku-fang, who works in the folk music world. Compared to most of the other singers around today, Tsai's voice stands out. It is unschooled. It is completely unlike the characterless pleasantness of most pop singers' voices, but instead seems very real. Listen especially to the way he sings "Nobody Knows": He doesn't intone the lyrics or take his pauses metronomically, but sings whatever he feels, which is something new for most listeners. As the playbill for the Cloud Gate Dance Troupe put it, "His voice is rough and straightforward, not shallow and monotonous like the typical pop singer."

After "Nobody Knows," Tsai then wrote "I Shouldn't" and other songs of underworld life, all of which sold well. Many others copied his style, and the Taiwanese-dialect music world was swept by a "gangster craze." Some students of Taiwanese song argue that the Taiwanese-dialect music scene began to decay at this point. "Songs that weren't about gangsters bit the dust," contends Chien Shang-jen, a member of the music community. He says that it became impossible to go back to the days of genteel compositions like "White Peony" and "If I Open Wide the Window of my Heart."

Not everybody agrees with such opinions. But from another point of view, you can tell from this the infectiousness of Tsai's tunes for certain strata of society. His good friend Wu Nien-chen argues that since Tsai "comes from the common crowd and can really relate to the masses," naturally he has a certain appeal.

Tsai's pieces, especially in his own interpretations, readily transmit to listeners the feel of climbing up from the lower rungs of society. In fact Tsai is always describing himself, and his tragic tone cries out the frustrations of his life. His tunes and lyrics pour out the emotional life of a man.

1 Lighting a cigarette is relaxing and focuses one's attention. 2 In 1982 Tsai opened a record company in Taichung to release cassettes, and the song "Nobody Knows What is in My Heart" made him well-known.（photo courtesy of Hu Tai-li） 3 Tsai, in his twenties, takes his child for a ride in the country. （photo courtesy of Hu Tai-li）

The legend of Ah Nan

He comes from a farming family in Paitou Village, Hsinkang, in Chiayi. His mother suffered from a debilitating illness, and he had to help out in the fields from the time he was eight. Because Tsai was just a small tike, his uncle would often see the unusual sight of stalks moving without anyone visible pushing them.

Tsai's father had to support his family of eight children, so he collected scrap metal during the day and planted crops by night. Ah Nan recalls, "Even now at this age, the only person I ever heard of who planted at night was my father."

When Tsai was sixteen, his mother tried put an end to her suffering by committing suicide. Ah Nan, who was then working away from home, borrowed some money from his boss and co-workers to get home. But it wasn't enough to get all the way, so after alighting at the station nearest his home, he had to walk twelve hours through the night to return to his family. But his mother, unable to hang on, had already breathed her last.

There was nothing remotely romantic about such experiences, and the impact of his youth is manifested in Ah Nan's melancholy character.

"I went straight to work after graduating from primary school when I was 13," Ah Nan recollects. Between 13 and 16, "I tried my hand at everything, from farming to commerce to factory work." He changed jobs frequently because "at each new place I would ask myself, 'Do I have any interest in this work? In the future is there some way I can set out on my own?'" Thus between the ages of 13 and 20, he drifted from place to place, never drawing a regular salary.

When he was 16, he heard the sound of a guitar from the factory next door; it was mind-blowing. "I knew that was what I wanted to do." He scrimped and saved to buy an NT$150 guitar, and began to learn on his own, with no one to teach him.

At 18 he decided to join a song and dance company and follow them on the road. Those days he made only NT$10 per month, only enough to buy one pack of Long Life cigarettes. But it was "the high point of my young life." In the company he mingled with the less reputable side of society in Taiwan: prostitutes, fallen young girls, bodyguards, cops, and gangsters. These all became grist for his song-writing mill later on.

1 To send Tsai off, director Hou Hsiao-hsien joined him in a song. 2 Wu Nien-chen, the director of A Borrowed Life, knows Tsai inside and out. He is also responsible for giving Tsai his life back. （photo by Tsai Cheng-tai, courtesy of Chang Shu Audio Visual Productions） 3 A photo from A Borrowed Life. （photo by Tsai Cheng-tai, courtesy of Chang Shu Audio Visual Productions）

The tragic song of a man

Ah Nan wrote "Nobody Knows" when he was 28. The song made a star out of recording artist Shen Wen-cheng and sold a million copies, still a record for a Taiwanese-language tune. And that doesn't include pirated copies.

When things were at their peak, Tsai owned at least ten buildings, drove a Mercedes, and bought land to build a country villa. He was surrounded by acolytes from all over. To play host to his friends and students, next to his own residence he built a five story complex where people got free room and board. He felt like he had a lot of friends: "I spent all day socializing, and never was in the mood for creating."

How long can heaven-sent opportunities last? "It wasn't long before he fell into the trap of fame and fortune, and got in deeper and deeper. It's hard for men with a little money to avoid the temptations of bars and hookers. After a few years, Ah Nan turned his hat factory over to somebody else, his wife left him, Shen Wen-cheng--his top singer--jumped ship, and his friends began to disappear one after another," says Hu Tai-li, who knows well what Tsai has been through.

Ah Nan reached a nadir both in his daily life and his composing. When he and his girlfriend split up, he completely went to pieces. He began taking drugs and embarked on a pattern of what he calls "premeditated self-destruction."

However, just at this time, film directors Hou Hsiao-hsien and Wu Nien-chen--two men of culture very different from his past friends--lent him a helping hand. They invited him to make a film, and urged him to put out an album. They helped him recover that which he most lacked--self-confidence--and the trio built up a friendship like that of the Three Musketeers.

1 Ah Nan is at his most moving when he sings a cappella. 2 A photo from Heartbreak Island. (courtesy of Hsu Hsiao-ming Films, Ltd.) 3 The Sun of Life is Tsai's first album of his own as a singer. (photo courtesy of UFO Records) 4 Tsai has made an anti-drug spot and also is doing promotions for his album, so he has been in the media spotlight. Still, it's hard to say if this is good or bad for an artist whose ties have always been to the common man.

Is there real friendship in this world?

"The 'sun' of my life before forty had already expired. Everything after forty is a gift from Hou Hsiao-hsien and Wu Nien-chen," says Tsai with deep and sincere emotion.

Tsai began his comeback by doing the music for Cloud Gate, after which he became well known in the arts community. Then he got working with Hou Hsiao-hsien, who invited him to write music for and appear in the classic film City of Sadness. That was when he was introduced to playwright Wu Nien-chen.

About that time Hou remarked to Wu, "Keep an eye on Tsai Chen-nan. He hasn't written any music in a long time." On another occasion Hou said to Wu, "It seems like Tsai Chen-nan is smoking some things he shouldn't be. Shouldn't we find something for him to do and bring him to Taipei, and get him away from the environment and those people around him in Taichung?"

Wu responded that he wanted Tsai to play the lead in A Borrowed Life.

By then Tsai had been taking drugs for quite a while, and was trying to quit. But when filming, sometimes the need for the drugs became overwhelming. Every time Wu saw him puffing on a soaked-through cigarette, his heart fell. "Whenever I saw that he was perspiring heavily, I knew we wouldn't get anything done."

Wu always found a way to put the picture on hold. He would start jaw-boning with the guys in charge of the lighting or the sound, or get into a conversation with the other actors, giving Tsai a chance to chill out. But he also sternly admonished Tsai, "This is the first time I've directed a film and the first time you've had a leading part. If you screw up, then we're both finished!" Tsai always responded, "No problem, big brother!"

I'm so cold

Just as the film was nearing completion, word came from Taichung that Tsai had been arrested while doing drugs. Wu and Hou rushed to Taichung and bailed him out. Upon seeing Tsai, Wu's first words were, "you're scaring the life out of me." Tsai responded as always: "No problem, big brother."

At that time Tsai thought to himself, "I'm trying to quit, and you arrest me anyway!?" Frustrated, he began to indulge with abandon. Wu says that on the day A Borrowed Life was finished, when he went to meet Tsai the latter was already in very bad shape, and was babbling incoherently and acting out of control. Wu feared Tsai would be humiliated at the final dinner, and found an excuse for him to miss the celebration. That night Wu got drunk and threw up all over. Later he went to Tsai's house and virtually got on his knees and begged "elder brother Nan" to seek treatment at a hospital.

Finally, Tsai checked into the Taipei City Psychiatric Center. Within a week he had come off narcotics. "He couldn't have any visitors for the first week. When I went to meet him when he came out on the seventh day, his first words to me were 'I'm so cold.' But that day the sun was shining and it was very warm. Tsai just stared out the car window, expressionless. I really wanted to ask him what he was thinking just then," relates Wu.

After a year-long transformation, the Tsai Chen-nan that Wu knew has become a new man. No longer melancholy, he is confident and has put on a little weight. Many people asked Wu why, with so many drug addicts around, he was so especially good to Tsai. Wu replied, "If we were of any help at all, it wasn't help for Tsai Chen-nan. Rather, it was help for an artist who has a great ability to compose, sing, and act."

Does man control destiny, or destiny, man?

With such a life, naturally Tsai has been through many changes. He says that before he began taking drugs he had a hopeful outlook on life, and was always laying out plans for the future. For example, he had plans to write three new songs every year, and that hasn't changed in the 14 years since he joined the musical community.

After getting on to drugs, he became very disillusioned with people. He felt deeply what it was like to be betrayed by his friends. He says, "If there's a god in heaven, I want him to change into human form so I can have it out with him: Why is it that I treated people with sincerity, and this is what I got in return? And if he doesn't want to change into a man, I hope he will change me into a spirit so I can talk it over with him. In life, do people really control fate? Or does fate control them?" he wonders. Some of his new compositions pose the same sorts of questions.

"When you come your hands are empty/You are covered in blood/When you go back you've got not a thing/Just a little fake jewelry on your fingers.

"Most people are very insipid/Everybody knows very well that it's all a dream/But they let life wear them out.

"Fame and fortune/Everybody wants them/Others corrupt you/You corrupt others/People run over you no matter who you are.

"Sincere loyalty to others/Is like a way of torturing yourself/Others hurt you/You hurt others/There is no way out.

"One day will come/When the sun sets and all is black/Only then will you know how meaningless it all is."

Coming and going in tears

Tsai Chen-nan says that his post-drug-use mood is not one of disappointment, but of comprehension. Life is innately tragic, and there's more time spent suffering than being happy. No matter whether you are riding high or down on your luck, the result is always the same. "You will die and leave others crying," says Tsai. He adds that people are strange: "When you come into the world, it's you crying, not other people. And when you leave the world, they're crying rather than you. People cry coming and going. Why is life so sad? Because people have attachments!" he concludes. He says that he is trying to get these feelings across in his songs.

Before getting off drugs, he only wrote songs for others. He felt that he didn't have the right image to be an artist, and wasn't very eloquent. "You have to have certain abilities to be a performer," he states. He makes an analogy to politics: Before you decide to run for neighborhood chief, then you should already be sure you can handle going all the way through being a city counselor, provincial assemblyman, and national legislator. "Aim at the moon to shoot the eagle," and only then will you have a long political career; the same goes for music.

He is willing to come up front and sing these days because, after having experienced so much, he doesn't take things like fame, fortune, or success to heart. He wanted to change his own image, and the music industry itself has been changing, so there is now a lot more room for a rough-edged voice like his, which has given him the boldness to go out and do it.

Those who care about Tsai worry that the pop music world is like a factory that uses advertising and packaging to manufacture so-called stars. Under these circumstances, there is a premium placed on novelty. Tsai could very well end up like many other Taiwanese-dialect pop stars--chewed up and spit out by the market. Others wonder whether spending all day with figures from the "cultural community" will cause Tsai to lose his special grass-roots feeling.

Will success change Tsai Chen-nan

"Ask not what Tsai Chen-nan can do for pop music. Ask instead what the pop music world will change Tsai into," says a worried Lin Ku-fang. If Tsai's music stays on the level of releasing his personal angst, and cannot reflect on life in a more profound way, then he will end up like so many other pop stars--a flash in the pan.

Tsai, who has just finished a concert, says that he is not insensitive to the expectations others have. Although "I know that I'm most suited to do more stuff like the a cappella singing recorded for Cloud Gate," he also knows that he cannot completely ignore the pop music market.

In the future he plans to try all sorts of different things. For example, in the just-completed concert he sang "Nobody Knows" in a rock-and-roll mode. Some people found it too upbeat, and said that rock is not the right way to express emotion. But Tsai explains that he just wanted to try a different style to express "what is in my heart."

"What's the worst that can happen if people can't accept me? I'll stop being a singer and go back to what I was doing before," he says. After so many vicissitudes, he really does think like someone devoting his life to religion: "There's really nothing in this world worth worrying too much about."

"Artists who come up from among the people, like Tsai, really can't be limited; they are 'free spirits.' When I meet someone like that, I wonder whether I should even consider myself an artist," says Lin Huai-min, founder of the Cloud Gate troupe.

Is it the case that "fearless free spirits" get more confident and stronger over time? What kind of creative material will come into Tsai's life as he does his prison term?

[Picture Caption]

p.88

A poster from A Borrowed Life. (photo by Tsai Cheng-tai, courtesy of Chang Shu Audio Visual Productions)

p.90

1 Lighting a cigarette is relaxing and focuses one's attention.

2 In 1982 Tsai opened a record company in Taichung to release cassettes, and the song "Nobody Knows What is in My Heart" made him well-known.(photo courtesy of Hu Tai-li)

3 Tsai, in his twenties, takes his child for a ride in the country. (photo courtesy of Hu Tai-li)

p.92

1 To send Tsai off, director Hou Hsiao-hsien joined him in a song.

2 Wu Nien-chen, the director of A Borrowed Life, knows Tsai inside and out. He is also responsible for giving Tsai his life back. (photo by Tsai Cheng-tai, courtesy of Chang Shu Audio Visual Productions)

3 A photo from A Borrowed Life. (photo by Tsai Cheng-tai, courtesy of Chang Shu Audio Visual Productions)

p.94

1 Ah Nan is at his most moving when he sings a cappella.

2 A photo from Heartbreak Island. (courtesy of Hsu Hsiao-ming Films, Ltd.)

3 The Sun of Life is Tsai's first album of his own as a singer. (photo courtesy of UFO Records)

4 Tsai has made an anti-drug spot and also is doing promotions for his album, so he has been in the media spotlight. Still, it's hard to say if this is good or bad for an artist whose ties have always been to the common man.

p.96

Life is innately tragic.

There's more time spent suffering than being happy.

No matter whether you are riding high or down on your luck, the result is always the same.

You will die and leave others crying.

When you come into the world, it's you crying, not other people.

And when you leave the world, they're crying rather than you.

People cry coming and going.

Why is life so sad?

Because people have attachments!