Musical calling
Sounding out these diverse consumer pathways-a tactic that has yielded annual revenues of over NT$100 million-is one of Yang's most successful ideas.
Nicknamed "the onion," Yang was born in 1960 to a farming family in Hsinchu County's Xiangshan (now part of Hsinchu City). Though he never received any formal musical tutelage, he nonetheless loved to sing as a child. As a student at Hsinchu Senior High, he learned trumpet well enough without any instruction to play in the wind ensemble. His inner voice was guiding him towards a musical path, but as a top student from a small-town background, expectations were heaped upon him thick and high, and he ended up at prestigious National Chiao Tung University in the transportation management department. After just a year he was finding his curriculum very tedious and a world apart from his true interests.
Though sorely tempted to drop out, he stayed on, if only to avoid being branded a failure. In the meantime, singing in the choir and producing the department newsletter provided him with the satisfaction that his studies could not. After school and military service, he could hardly wait to find work in the music business, but with no formal training, there were too many obstacles to surmount. He was at a loose end for more than six months before landing his first job as a salesperson for Tangshan Music.
Tangshan was founded by three teachers, all graduates of Soochow University's music department, and in those days their focus was on promoting Chinese classical music. As the company's only clerk, Yang was charged with a number of tasks. Not only was he responsible for selling sheet music, instruments, and cassette tapes, he was the one expected to make pleasant conversation with mothers who accompanied their children to music classes, and to try to get them to commit to another term. Back in 1986, there weren't any convenient ticketing networks like Era Ticket in place yet, so whenever the company sponsored a concert it was up to him to hop on his motorcycle-come rain or shine-and race about Taipei and its environs delivering tickets and collecting money. It was demanding work for a monthly pittance of NT$8000 compared to the minimum NT$20,000 that his classmates were earning at railroad and highway bureaus.
He recalls riding from Xindian to Banqiao in the pouring rain when his motorcycle suddenly quit. He tried to restart it over and over again, but it was all in vain. Drenched to the bone, he succumbed to frustration and began to sob aloud.
"I started to wonder: I'm a graduate of Chiao Tung University. How did I end up like this?" Better, perhaps, that he didn't know at the time how much more he would have to endure before his musical dreams would bear fruit.