Draft:Ying Chen

Ying Chen (1933—) was born in Hengchun Town of Pingtung County, Taiwan, and is a folk artist. In 2020, she was recognized by the Ministry of Culture as an important preserver of the traditional performing arts “Folk Songs From Hengchun.”

Ying Chen was born in Hengchun Peninsula in 1933. When she was a child, she learned about Folk Songs From Hengchun after seeing her father’s friend, Da Chen, use Yueqin to perform major events in Hengchun. When Ying Chen was older, she went to the mountains with adults to harvest sisal hemp to earn money for the family. She would often sing folk songs with her colleagues as a way to relieve work stress.

After Ying Chen was married at the age of nineteen, she stopped singing for a while in order to earn money for her family. After her family life stabilized, she resumed singing and participated in folk singing competitions. In 1968, she won the local temple folk singing championship for the first time. She began to compete in various places to accumulate more singing experience.

After Ying Chen turned 60, she successively learned Yueqin from the senior folk singers Tien-Chueh Hsu, Hsin-Chuan Chang, and Cheung Man Kit. Hsin-Chuan Chang taught Ying Chen that learning Yueqin should adhere to the traditional method: Yueqin should be learned attentively and carefully, and it is unsuitable to use modern notation methods to learn it. Ying Chen is proficient in the songs “Thoughts Arising,” “Pingpu Tune,” “Five Hole Minor,” “Ox Tail Accompaniment,” “Four Season Spring,” “Fenggang Minor,” and others.

She is most famous for performing “Thoughts Arising” and “Four Season Spring.” Like her first Yueqin instructor, Da Chen, Ying Chen also uses “Thoughts Arising” and “Four Season Spring” as the music to sing the short narrative song “The Tragic Story of A Yuan and A Fa.”