30-Second Overview: Chiao An-pu wrote "Bao Bei" (寶貝) at 13 and became the voice of Taiwan's indie music scene under the stage name "Deserts Chang." In 2013, she held a Republic of China flag at a concert in Manchester and was banned from the Chinese market. In 2015, she retired the name, disappeared for three years, and returned as "Anpu." Her 2022 album 9522 — teenage songs re-recorded at 40 — won Song of the Year at the Golden Melody Awards. Then in 2024, a handwritten letter congratulating China's National Day shattered everything. Same person, two audiences lost, for completely opposite reasons.
Two Tables at Witch House
In the years when Chiao An-pu still went by Deserts Chang, her father Jiao Renhe worried every day.
Jiao Renhe had been Secretary-General of the Straits Exchange Foundation, President Lee Teng-hui's chief speechwriter, and the man who coined the phrase "One China, each side with its own interpretation" in 1995 — the foundational formula for Taiwan's cross-strait policy [^1]. His eldest son, Jiao Yuan-pu, became Taiwan's most prominent classical music critic, interviewing 55 of the world's great pianists. His youngest daughter, Jiao Ci-pu, went into law. Of three children, only the middle one dropped out of high school, smoked, drank, and never got past an incomplete transcript.
Deserts Chang waited tables at Trader Vic's for NT$80 an hour. At night she sang at Witch House (女巫店), a legendary Taipei live house. Jiao Renhe didn't dare go listen. He sent his youngest daughter with two classmates. The report made his stomach drop: two tables occupied. One was a couple sitting as far from the stage as possible. The only people up front were his younger daughter and her friends [^2].
"You think you can make a living from music?" he told her. "How many so-called musicians end up playing violin in subway tunnels?" [^2]
Deserts Chang shouted back: "Dad! I'm going to be famous!"
This girl who couldn't afford a NT$200 taxi ride home, who scraped by on minimum-wage shifts, could slam the table in front of the man who'd negotiated across the Taiwan Strait [^2]. Years later, Jiao Renhe used a kite metaphor to describe their relationship: he let out enough string for the kite to fly, but never so much that the wind could carry it away [^2].
A Thirteen-Year-Old's War
Born May 30, 1981, in Taipei. Her grandfather Jiao Dian-kui was one of China's first-generation lawyers [^1]. In this political and legal dynasty, she was what her father called the Lin Daiyu of the family — "No matter how carefully you speak to her, you'll still hurt her." Her younger sister was the poised Xue Baochai who "drank her milk and slept quietly"; An-pu "took two hours to finish 200cc of milk" [^2].
At thirteen, she got into a fight with her family, slammed the door, left, and hummed a melody while walking [^3]. That song became "Bao Bei" (寶貝) — "My baby, baby, let me give you something sweet, so you sleep well tonight." It became the lullaby every Taiwanese parent sings to their child, but it started as a teenager singing to comfort herself.
In high school she started writing poetry under the pen name "Deserts Chang" (張懸). The character 懸 carries the meaning of suspended, unresolved [^4]. Her reading list included Kafka, Mishima, Shen Congwen, Zheng Chouyu, Bei Dao, and T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land — which she read for over twenty years. In a 2022 Unitas Literary Monthly interview, she said: "You must abandon the attempt to decode its metaphors. The real metaphor emerges from Eliot's citations creating a background that exceeds the text" [^5]. She once said: "Books gave me a push and turned me into a singer" [^5].
At sixteen she walked into her parents' bedroom and said she was dropping out. Jiao Renhe said only: "OK, I understand." Her prepared tears and grand declarations suddenly had nowhere to go. "Nobody's fighting with you anymore. You can never feel sorry for yourself again," she recalled later [^2]. It was the first time she viscerally felt that her life was entirely her own decision.
He sent her to a host family in England. She couldn't stand the 8 PM curfew and fled back to Taiwan [^2]. After that: waiting tables, singing at Witch House. Father and daughter communicated by letter. Both still keep each other's correspondence [^2].
From Witch House to the Golden Melody Awards
In 2003, she won the Audience Award and Independent Music Award at the Ho-hai-yan Rock Festival with her band Mango Runs [^6]. Over the next few years she became the most frequent performer at Taipei's live houses, having written over a hundred songs before she turned nineteen.
Her 2006 debut album My Life Will... was released on Sony BMG — but the recordings had actually been completed in 2001, then shelved for five years when the label restructured. Producer Li Shou-chuan rediscovered her at Witch House and convinced her to re-sign [^7]. Four Golden Melody Award nominations at the 18th ceremony, including Best Mandarin Album and Song of the Year for "Bao Bei" [^7].
2009's City was the turning point. She practiced electric guitar intensively, formed the band Algae, and shifted from gentle folk to rock and garage [^8]. 2012's Games We Play was the real watershed: she wrote lyrics and music for nine of ten tracks and served as co-producer [^9]. The opening song, "Rose-Colored You" (玫瑰色的你), was dedicated to people who "devote their lives to things truly worth fighting for, never tempted by petty gains" — street activists, independent publishers, everyone pushing against the current [^10]. The song became the unofficial soundtrack of the Sunflower Movement and won Best Lyricist at the 24th Golden Melody Awards [^9]. It was reportedly censored in mainland China [^9].
A woman who wrote songs for protesters had reached the peak of Taiwan's indie music scene. Then she decided to kill the name "Deserts Chang."
The Flag at Manchester
November 2, 2013. Manchester, England. A small concert of about five hundred people [^6]. Most of the audience were Chinese exchange students. A few Taiwanese students in the front row brought a Republic of China flag. She took it, held it to her chest, and said in English:
"It's just a flag. It shows where I come from. Why do you have to make it about politics?" [^11]
A Chinese student shouted from the audience: "No politics today!"
That sentence ended her career in China. Weibo boycotts forced the cancellation of her upcoming Beijing concert [^12]. In Taiwan, tens of thousands of netizens crowned her a "patriotic singer." She was baffled: "You've got the wrong idea" [^13].
A month later, in an exclusive interview with the Taipei Times: "If Taiwan's national identity wants greater international visibility, it will inevitably be challenged. I'm not the first person to face this. Even if I don't do it, someone else will" [^11].
She just held up a flag. But on this side of the Taiwan Strait, nothing is "just" anything.
Sunflower and the Last Tides Prophecy
After the flag incident, she didn't retreat. When the Sunflower Movement erupted in March 2014, she posted repeatedly on Facebook criticizing the government's forced passage of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement, urging people "not to give up their right to participate in civic issues" [^14]. She was a long-time supporter of anti-nuclear movements, water rights disputes, and marriage equality [^4].
"Tides Prophecy" (潮水箴言) was her concert series beginning in 2010, growing from thousand-person venues to arenas. She served as concert producer and artistic director herself — designing each show as a contemporary art exhibition rather than a commercial concert: literary texts as the foundation, cinematic storytelling in the visuals, each song with its own visual world [^15].
In January 2015, the final "Tides Prophecy" at Kaohsiung Arena [^16]. After the last song, she announced: the name Deserts Chang ends here.
Her reason for reverting to her birth name was one sentence: "An-pu is the name my parents gave me. I simply want them — they have a habit of clipping newspaper articles — to see those two characters when they collect stories about me" [^17].
Then she disappeared.
Three Years of Silence, and a Cat
The trigger was a cat. During the promotional period for Games We Play, the cat she'd had since her teens was diagnosed with a tumor. Torn between career obligations and wanting to be present for the animal's final days, the anxiety became unbearable. She chose to stop [^18].
For three years she read, practiced calligraphy, wrote poetry, improved her instrumental skills, and studied stage production [^19]. She accompanied that cat through its final illness and death. She wrote on Facebook: the attention she'd received never truly belonged to her.
This silence mattered. Deserts Chang had spent twelve years becoming a symbol: indie music, social movements, national identity. The symbol was too heavy. She needed to set it down to find out what remained underneath.
Cloud Alchemy: A Statement in 3,200 LED Panels
In May 2018, she held the "Cloud Alchemy" (煉雲) concert at Taipei Arena under the name "Anpu." Twenty thousand tickets sold out instantly [^20].
The production cost NT$36 million. The main stage was built from over 3,200 irregularly assembled LED panels in a cloud formation — the stage alone cost NT$15 million and took six months to design [^20]. She selected 22 cover songs from over 200 candidates: all works by Taiwanese artists who had influenced her, spanning three decades of underground and indie music. For most of the 20,000 attendees, these were effectively new songs they'd never heard.
Music critic Ma Shih-fang wrote: "A vast, magnificent dream." He described the building-block stage as creating a dreamlike sensory experience — precise, grand, breathtaking, yet never flashy [^20].
She performed only one of her own songs: "Bao Bei." She reportedly cried after singing it.
Her definition of "alchemy" (煉): "extracting nothingness from existence, constantly simplifying complexity" [^20]. This wasn't a comeback concert. It was a statement: I'm back, but I'm not the person you remember.
9522: A Letter to Girls Growing Up
On January 18, 2022, Anpu announced her divorce on stage, saying she'd completed the paperwork that afternoon. She and animation director Su Bo-wei had been married two and a half years and had a son [^21]. She publicly called her ex-husband "the bravest man in the Chinese-speaking world" for marrying her [^21]. She said she planned to see a therapist after the Lunar New Year — openly acknowledging the need for professional support [^21].
Nine months later, the album 9522 was released. Sixteen songs, nearly all written between ages 14 and 17. The cryptic title encodes 1995 to 2022 — a twenty-seven-year span [^22]. A forty-year-old woman re-recording her teenage songs, positioned as "a letter to girls and women who are growing up" [^22].
"A Flash and How It Lasts" (最好的時光) was the first single, its melody written at fourteen. She once submitted it as a car commercial jingle — rejected. Years later, actress Chang Chun-ning heard the demo and encouraged her to finish it. Singer Wu Qingfeng was the first to hear the completed track. His verdict: "This moment makes this life worth it." They listened to each other's albums and talked until dawn [^23].
In 2023, "A Flash and How It Lasts" won Song of the Year at the 34th Golden Melody Awards [^24]. On award night, her name wasn't Deserts Chang. It was Anpu.
October First
On October 1, 2024, at exactly 10:01 PM, her agency posted a photo of a handwritten note on Weibo: "Blessing the 75th anniversary of New China. May the people be harmonious, may all be peaceful for ten thousand miles." Signed: An-pu's blessings. The timing was deliberately coordinated with China's National Day [^26].
The woman who was banned from China eleven years ago for holding a Republic of China flag was now wishing the People's Republic a happy birthday.
Taiwanese fans' reaction wasn't anger. It was heartbreak. Her friend He Xin-sui tried to defend her and was excoriated online [^27]. Writers analyzed her recent trajectory, calling it "premeditated loyalty" [^28]. Political scientist Huang Zhao-nian argued it was part of China's united front strategy — forcing Taiwanese artists to make political statements to influence young people's identity [^29].
Eleven days later, October 12, at Takao Rock Festival in Kaohsiung. Before she went on stage, the crowd was already holding Taiwan independence whale flags and Jade Mountain flags. Someone shouted: "Chiao An-pu, why?"
She didn't answer directly. She said [^30]:
"At my shows, you are always free and safe. The world is big, and I can't say every place is the same. But at least where I perform, you can be yourself."
Then she bowed deeply to the flag holders.
Fire EX! vocalist Yang Da-zheng used seven minutes of his Takao Festival set to address the situation. He told fans: if you're disappointed, walk away, but don't go on a witch hunt [^30].
You Can Be Yourself
Eleven years ago in Manchester, she said "It's just a flag." Eleven years later at Takao, she said "You can be yourself." Both sentences point to the same thing: refusing to define your freedom for you, and refusing to let you define hers.
At forty-three, Anpu says she's living "the most honest phase of my life," having shed the unanswerable questions of youth and begun treasuring things that never needed answers [^31]. She says she's not an authority but "someone who accompanies others through perspective shifts" [^31]. She looks forward to aging: "Society's demand that women always look young exhausts me. Freedom from hormones and others' gazes — that's what truly happy aging looks like" [^31].
You could say she changed. You could also say she's been doing the same thing all along: living in the gray zone where no flag is big enough and no name can contain her.
Jiao Renhe said in a 2019 interview that the most precious gift his daughter gave him was teaching him the world is plural, and life is a multiple-choice question, not a single-answer test [^2].
Perhaps the daughter learned the same thing from her father. Only the answer she chose isn't the one either side wants to hear.
Further Reading
- Taiwan Indie Music — The indie scene Deserts Chang belonged to
- History of Taiwanese Rock — From banned songs to festival culture
- The Sunflower Movement — 2014: thirty seconds that changed Taiwan
- Taiwan Music Festival Culture — From Ho-hai-yan to Takao
References
[^1]: Jiao Renhe — Wikipedia — SEF Secretary-General, Lee Teng-hui speechwriter, "One China, each side with its own interpretation" (1995)
[^2]: Jiao Renhe and singer-songwriter Anpu: As a father, one hand holds the string, one hand lets her fly — CommonHealth/CW Group — 2019 joint interview: kite metaphor, Witch House two tables, NT$80/hour, Lin Daiyu analogy, letters
[^3]: Bao Bei (Deserts Chang song) — Chinese Encyclopedia — Written at 13 after running away from home
[^4]: Anpu — Wikipedia — Pen name origin, discography, social activism (anti-nuclear, water rights, marriage equality)
[^5]: Anpu reads The Waste Land for 20 years — Unitas Literary Monthly — Literary influences, "books gave me a push"
[^6]: Deserts Chang — Wikipedia — 2003 Ho-hai-yan festival awards, Manchester concert ~500 people
[^7]: My Life Will... — Wikipedia — 2001 recordings shelved, 2006 release, 4 GMA nominations
[^8]: Deserts Chang City review — ccmusichk — 2009 stylistic shift, band Algae
[^9]: Games We Play — Wikipedia — 9/10 tracks self-written, co-producer, 24th GMA Best Lyricist, China censorship
[^10]: Rose-Colored You as activist anthem — womany — Dedicated to social activists
[^11]: National identity best faced head-on — Taipei Times — December 2013 interview
[^12]: Flag incident leads to boycott — ETtoday — Beijing concert cancellation
[^13]: Deserts Chang baffled by "patriotic singer" label — ETtoday
[^14]: Public reactions to the Sunflower Movement — Wikipedia — Facebook posts criticizing government
[^15]: Anpu Tides Prophecy 2022 — Mirror Media — Concert production philosophy
[^16]: Tides Prophecy history — Vocus — 2010 Legacy to 2015 Kaohsiung Arena
[^17]: Deserts Chang reverts to birth name — ETtoday — "Let my parents see those characters"
[^18]: Why Anpu left — UDN — Cat's tumor, trigger for hiatus
[^19]: What Deserts Chang did in three years — Yahoo News — Reading, calligraphy, poetry, instruments, stage production
[^20]: The Cloud Alchemists — The Reporter — NT$36M production, 3,200 LED panels, Ma Shih-fang review, 22 cover songs, definition of "alchemy"
[^21]: Anpu announces divorce — A Day Magazine — January 2022 on-stage announcement, therapy plans
[^22]: Anpu 9522 — Blow Music — 16 songs, ages 14-17, cryptic title, "letter to girls growing up"
[^23]: Chang Chun-ning and A Flash — Mirror Media — Car commercial rejection, Wu Qingfeng verdict
[^24]: Deserts Chang — Wikipedia — 34th GMA Song of the Year
[^26]: Anpu handwritten letter for China's 75th anniversary — CTS News — October 1, 2024, 10:01 PM Weibo post
[^27]: Friend He Xin-sui's defense backfires — UDN
[^28]: Writer analyzes Anpu's trajectory — Liberty Times — "Premeditated loyalty"
[^29]: Analysis: united front strategy — The News Lens — Forcing artists into political statements
[^30]: Anpu at Takao Rock Festival — UDN — October 12, 2024, whale and Jade Mountain flags, Yang Da-zheng 7 minutes
[^31]: Anpu on aging and philosophy — Lohas/Harper's Bazaar — "Looking forward to getting old," "accompanying others through perspective shifts"