Grains of truth

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-05-27 09:30

Taiwan band Hohak's lead singer Chen Kuan-Yu at the band's concert in Beijing.

Before arriving in Beijing for the concert Rice and Love at Peking University on Sunday, Taiwan band Hohak's lead singer Chen Kuan-Yu was farming in a small village in East Taiwan called Wan'an.

It is this village that changed Chen's life and inspired the group's latest album, also called Rice and Love.

"If you go to Wan'an at this time, (you will find that) the rice is just turning from green to yellow, making for very beautiful scenery," he says.

When Chen visited Wan'an for the first time a few years ago, he stayed at a family guesthouse and worked in the fields with the family, an experience that was in sharp contrast to growing up in the industrial city of Jhongli.

"Farming gives me a feeling of settling down, and I greatly enjoy watching the crops grow," he says.

He also became close to the family, who told him he was welcome to room in anytime for free.

Since then Chen has visited frequently, with Wan'an being just a 6-hour train journey from his home in Jhongli. He visits at least once a month, staying - and farming - for 4 or 5 days at a time.

Country life is the direct inspiration for the songs in Rice and Love. "If I had not been wounded, I would be faraway now, but this is good, for I can stay home to help," he sings in If I Had Not Been.

"Stamp it. Stamp the weeds deep into the field to be fertilizer. Stamp worries and depression deep into the field to be fertilizer," read the lyrics of another song called Stamping the Rice Field.

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