The Appearance of Yang Kui’s Images and Music Adaptation in the 1990s

In 1992, Qiu Hong Xiang from Manli Culture Studio, in collaboration with Taiwan Pen Association and the Chung Li-ho Literary Foundation, held the “Taiwan, Beautiful Mother: 1992 Humanistic Perspective. The Respective of Yang Kui and Zhong Li-he” at the Eslite Bookstore Taipei World Trade Center Store. The exhibition featured manuscripts, books, and memorabilia of Yang Kui and Zhong Li-Ho, as well as photographs of the two writers, which were particularly important for the Yang Kui documentary films of the 1990s.

Yang Kui, who had lived in Tunghai Garden since the 1960s, had been visited by many writers since the mid-1970s. His photographs were featured in newspaper reports and interviews at the time, both long-range and close-ups. In hindsight, Yang Kui’s photographs were probably the most numerous of any writer of his generation. “The Respective of Yang Kui and Zhong Li-he” was a simple document exhibition, but it was undoubtedly the first time that Yang Kui’s image had been presented through a “montage of images.” This collection of photographs, which had already been seen for over 20 years, was also an important source of material for independent filmmaker Huang Mingchuan, who began filming the documentary “Taiwan Literature” Literary Documentaries: “Yang Kui” (1997) two or three years later. Looking back on history, the exhibition hinted at the first version of Yang Kui’s “biographical image.” The book “Yang Kui Photo Collection” (1992), published in conjunction with the “The Respective of Yang Kui and Zhong Li-he,” shows that the photographs on display were extremely rich, spanning the 1920s to the 1980s, and included family photos of Yang Kui and Yeh Tao, snapshots of everyday life, Yang Kui’s manuscripts, and a small number of woodblock prints depicting Yang Kui himself and his works. “Yang Kui Photo Collection” can be seen as the second version of Yang Kui’s “biographical image.”

If the 1992 exhibition and its photo book “Yang Kui Photo Collection” were the “pre-documentary” version of documentary “Yang Kui,” then the “Literary Concert” of the “Yang Kui and Zhong Lihe Retrospective Exhibition” (September 27 and October 4, 1992) was the original version of the songs and creative teams in the Crystal Records “Literature Voice” series album “Yang Kui: Mother Goose Gets Married” (1993).

Curator Qiu Hong Xiang invited Chu Yueh-Hsin to expand his repertoire and hold two concerts at the exhibition venue because Chu Yueh-Hsin had written the song “Rose” (lyrics: Lin Lianche; music: Chu Yueh-Hsin) for Yang Kui in the album “Roadside Banquet (I)” (1991, Crystal Records). Chu Yueh-Hsin invited Eason Lee Kun-Cheng , Lin Lianche, Shiao Fu-Tr, and Chun-Chieh Chen to write lyrics, compose music, and perform, and they sang a total of 12 songs, including songs that had already been released before 1992. The song themes were divided into three categories: Yang Kui’s Street Theater plays, new songs dedicated to Yang Kui or Yeh Tao, and songs taken from Yang Kui’s literary works.