Fire EX — The Name They Found by the Pool, Twenty-Five Years of Singing

30-second overview: In the summer of 2000, three sixteen-year-olds from Kaohsiung's Sanmin MXHC looked up at a red fire extinguisher hanging on a wall and decided that was the band's name. Twenty-five years later, Fire EX is Taiwan's most important Taiwanese-language punk band: "Island Sunrise" became the generational anthem of the Sunflower Movement and won the Golden Melody Song of the Year; lead vocalist Yang Dajheng crossed over to win the Golden Bell Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, becoming Taiwan's first rock frontman to win all three major music and arts awards; the label they founded, Tirk Records, moved its base back to Kaohsiung, and the Fireball Festival has run to its sixth edition. At the 2024 Takao Festival, while all of Taiwan was engaged in a witch-hunt against three artists accused of being "pro-China," Yang Dajheng used seven minutes to tell ten thousand people in the audience: put your energy into supporting the people who are still trying.

The Thing by the Pool

Summer 2000, Kaohsiung Sanmin Vocational Senior High School, General Studies Class Year One. Sixteen-year-old Yang Jiajun — the name all of Taiwan would later call Yang Dajheng — had originally joined the karaoke club. His classmate Zheng Yuchen pulled him over to watch the music club's show. He stood in the audience and watched one performance, then decided he wanted to be on stage too.¹

They needed a band name. They thought for a long time and couldn't come up with anything. Walking past the school's swimming pool, they saw a red fire extinguisher hanging on the wall. "That one." ¹

The original lineup included Yang Dajheng (vocals), Zhou Qunkai (guitar), and Lin Rongyan (drums), a student band born for school events. In October 2004, Zheng Yuchen officially took over on guitar, joined by bassist Chen Jingyuan, and the three-member core held steady for two decades.² The one position that never stopped rotating was drummer — across twenty-five years they went through seven, the most recent being Ke Zhixun (stage name Ke Guang), who joined in October 2019 and was jokingly called the band's "original hater": he used to criticize Fire EX online, and then found himself sitting behind their kit.²

Curator's note: A name picked up beside a swimming pool became a Taiwanese cultural symbol twenty-five years later. Some things are just found — no design required; they simply grow into icons.

Mainlander Kid, Taiwanese-Language Punk

Yang Dajheng was born on August 24, 1984, in Kaohsiung, to a mainlander family with Hakka ancestry on the paternal side.³ The household spoke Mandarin — not as a deliberate rejection of Taiwanese, but simply because there was no occasion to use it. He grew up listening to Teresa Teng and Bai Guang.³

Taiwanese was something he picked up later. He started encountering it in elementary and middle school, and what truly ignited his passion for Taiwanese-language music was Wu Bai.³ "Wu Bai made me feel like Taiwanese could be cool and powerful, not just the kind of longing you'd hear at a karaoke bar." He channeled that energy into punk — using the fastest tempos and roughest voices to sing Taiwanese as an attitude.

In July 2007, their debut album Let's Go! was released.⁴ In 2009, "Goodnight Taiwan" from the album People on the Sea went viral online — a lullaby sung in Taiwanese that somehow captured the anxiety of an entire island.⁵ Three kids from Kaohsiung started drawing the attention of all of Taiwan.

2014: That Song in the Legislature

On March 18, 2014, students occupied the Legislative Yuan to protest the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement. "Goodnight Taiwan" was already being played inside the chambers by protesters.⁶ Five days later, a Facebook message reached Yang Dajheng's phone: students from the Taipei National University of the Arts were inside the chambers; they had video production capability; they wanted a theme song.⁶

Yang Dajheng brought his guitar to the Legislative Yuan. He met Lin Fei-fan, and standing among the occupiers, he felt an atmosphere he described as "tense but full of hope."⁷ They wrote it in two days and recorded it in one. The song was called "Island Sunrise."⁶

"The sky is slowly brightening; let us sing this song out loud."

On March 27, the band entered the legislative chambers and protest areas surrounding them to teach the song. They set up recording equipment to capture protesters singing along. The joint singing video surpassed 50,000 views within a day.⁶ On March 30, the 330 demonstration on Ketagalan Boulevard drew an estimated 500,000 people singing together in person. By April 5, the YouTube view count had passed one million.⁶

On December 30, Sony Music Taiwan officially released the commercial single. The following year, it won Best Song of the Year at the 26th Golden Melody Awards.⁸ On the broadcast night, Tencent's mainland China feed cut out at the moment this award was announced. The Propaganda Department ordered Chinese domestic media to delete all related coverage. The song was officially banned in China.⁸

Yang Dajheng made the non-commercial use rights freely available to everyone supporting the movement.⁶ From then on, whenever Taiwan had street protests, rallies, or people who needed a song to hold themselves together deep in the night, "Island Sunrise" appeared. It has been called Taiwan's "unofficial national anthem."⁷ In 2025, someone on Threads mocked the song, asking "why are people still singing this eleven years later?" Yang Dajheng fired back: "What I want to ask is — why do I still have to sing it eleven years later?"⁹

Yang Dajheng: Rock Frontman, Actor, Twice-Divorced Man

Onstage he is a punk vocalist. Offstage, Yang Dajheng's life reads like a serial drama.

In 2013, he married indie musician Cheng Nien-hua (Enno Cheng). In January 2016, Cheng came out to him as LGBTQ+. Yang Dajheng was shattered, but chose to support her. After their divorce, he said publicly: "I will always defend Enno's right to be herself."¹⁰ After the divorce the two became close friends and professional collaborators — Enno signed with Tirk Records, and her 2017 album Pluto was released on the label her ex-husband founded. For a period, Yang Dajheng, his second wife Shandong (Li Wenhui), and Enno all shared a 50-ping apartment, splitting the rent, and tabloids wrote about it repeatedly.¹⁰

He married Shandong in November 2016; their daughter was born in 2017. They divorced on November 1, 2024, announced publicly in February 2025. Two marriages, two peaceful endings.¹⁰

Acting was another thread. He was not dabbling. At the 58th Golden Bell Awards in 2023, he won Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for I Will Be There, playing a school bus driver who cannot speak.¹¹ Combined with his Golden Melody (for "Island Sunrise") and his Golden Indie Music Award (Best Live Performance), Yang Dajheng became the first rock frontman in Taiwan to hold all three major awards.¹¹ In 2025, he appeared in Zero Day — a drama imagining a Chinese military attack on Taiwan — and attended the Tokyo premiere alongside Japanese actor Takahashi Issei.¹²

Tirk Records: Building Your Own Road

In August 2015, the four band members turned seventeen or eighteen years of independent operation experience into a company: Tirk Records.¹³ Releasing their own records was only the beginning — they also wanted to sign other artists, organize events, and run music festivals. Enno Cheng was one of the first artists signed.

In August 2017, the first Fireball Festival opened at the Kaohsiung Exhibition Center. They brought in Sum 41 and HYUKOH alongside local bands on the same bill.¹⁴ Reportedly the first edition lost money, but they kept going. After a four-year pandemic interruption, the festival revived in 2023 at Taoyuan Stadium. By 2026 it had reached its sixth edition; ELLEGARDEN (legendary Japanese punk band) had been invited three times, each time postponed due to the lead vocalist's health issues, and finally made it in 2025.¹⁴

The bolder move was relocation. Tirk Records moved its base from Taipei back to Kaohsiung, establishing itself at the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying).¹⁵ Yang Dajheng teaches there, mentoring young musicians. This is a team that spent twenty years proving itself, then deliberately chose to return to where it started — telling kids in the south: you don't have to move north to survive.

Baseball, Chen Chin-feng, and a Song Written for a Champion

Fire EX genuinely loves baseball. They always have, from day one.

In 2016, Taiwanese baseball legend Chen Chin-feng retired. Lamigo Monkeys approached Fire EX and asked them to write a tribute song. "Crazy Before No. 52" was recorded and mixed in Japan; within twelve hours of the MV going live it had surpassed 400,000 views and 10,000 shares.¹⁶ The Fireball Festival moved to Taoyuan Stadium starting in 2019 — a music festival inside a baseball stadium, a combination only Fire EX would find completely natural.

In 2025, they wrote "Today's Me" for the documentary Road to the Championship, recording Taiwan's run to win the 2024 Premier12. Yang Dajheng wrote it in the first person, as if speaking for the players on the field. The song was taken up again by fans during the 2026 World Baseball Classic.¹⁶

International: From SXSW to Fuji Rock

Fire EX is one of Taiwan's furthest-traveling punk bands.

They first took the stage at SXSW (Austin, Texas) in 2012. In 2017, they became the first Taiwanese band to appear at Japan's Punkspring.¹⁷ That same summer they performed at Central Park Summer Stage in New York as part of the "Taiwanese Waves" program. In one year alone they toured 25 cities and played 35 shows worldwide.¹⁷ In 2022, they performed at Fuji Rock Festival.¹⁷

Japan is their second home. They maintain a dedicated Twitter account (@fireexjapan), Japan-edition albums, and regular tour routes. Their friendship with ELLEGARDEN runs especially deep: a legendary Japanese punk band willing to accept three invitations from a Taiwanese band says something by itself.¹⁴

The 25th anniversary tour from 2025 to 2026 expanded to Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Singapore, and Manila.¹⁷ Zepp New Taipei, Legacy Taichung, Live Warehouse Kaohsiung — from south to north, then from island to overseas.

Beyond Sunflower: A Band's Political Voice

Before the Sunflower Movement, Fire EX was already on the streets. Anti-nuclear rallies, opposition to the Dapu demolitions — wherever a protest needed music, they showed up with guitars.¹⁸

On May 20, 2016, Fire EX was invited to perform at President Tsai Ing-wen's inauguration ceremony.¹⁸ During the 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition movement, they performed at the "Support Hong Kong, Want Freedom!" concert at Liberty Square, and collaborated with Hong Kong lyricist Albert Leung (Lam Chik) on the song "A Tale of Two Cities."¹⁸ In 2019, when Ko Wen-je made dismissive remarks on the same-sex marriage referendum, Yang Dajheng publicly called him out.¹⁰

Fire EX has been banned in China since "Island Sunrise." They are entirely cut off from the mainland Chinese market. But Yang Dajheng made his position clear in his seven-minute Takao Festival address: "We're very fortunate — we don't have to think about the Chinese market."¹⁹ The subtext was: he understands the people who are not so fortunate.

2024: Seven Minutes at Takao Festival

In early October 2024, three artists — Anpu (Chang Hsien), Mayday, and Wu Kang-jen — drew criticism from Taiwanese audiences for posting National Day congratulatory messages on Weibo. On October 12 and 13, Takao Festival drew approximately 100,000 people to Kaohsiung over two days. Anpu performed on the 12th, facing an audience holding whale flags and Yushan flags, and said: "At events I perform, you will always be free and safe."

The following day, October 13, Fire EX headlined. Yang Dajheng stopped in the middle of the set at the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts stage and spent nearly seven minutes addressing what had happened.¹⁹

He began by noting that he almost never talks between songs, because "something will go wrong no matter what I say." Then he got to the point: "This is the most difficult age, the age that most needs solidarity."¹⁹

He neither defended the three artists nor joined in the denunciation. He talked about structure: "This is an awkward moment in time, and an awkward moment for the market. We're very lucky — we don't have to think about the Chinese market. But what they're facing is different — enormous temptation, and maybe a need to support more people."¹⁹

Someone in the crowd shouted: "We still have you!" He corrected them: "No, you can't make that comparison — they are also precious people."¹⁹

Then came the line that silenced the entire venue: "If the way we witch-hunt looks the same as the little pinks on the other side of the strait, that is the most terrifying thing. So I'm asking everyone: put your energy into Taiwan's future, don't split each other apart."¹⁹

He offered an alternative: instead of spending time attacking the idols who disappointed you, go find who is making good movies, who is running good concerts and music festivals — and spend your time supporting them.¹⁹

The crowd erupted. After the seven-minute clip was uploaded by audience members to social media, it spread far beyond the Takao Festival venue. Some called him naive; some said it was the most mature response to the entire incident. Whatever the verdict, Yang Dajheng did something very Fire EX: rather than taking the high ground on either side, he stood in the middle of everyone.

Curator's note: Seven minutes. A band banned in China for ten years, standing on a Taiwanese stage, speaking up for three colleagues who had "gone to China." This is a kind of freedom available only to someone who genuinely has nothing to lose from the Chinese market — it takes real grounding to be able to say this.

Further Reading

• Taiwan Indie Music Scene — The indie scene Fire EX operates in
• Taiwan Rock: From Underground to Mainstream — From the banned-song era to the Spring Scream festival
• Sunflower Movement — The March that gave birth to "Island Sunrise"
• Taiwan Music Festival Culture — From Hohaiyan to Fireball Festival
• Chang Hsien and Anpu — The other side of Takao Festival's seven minutes
• Chthonic — A generation earlier, using Taiwanese black metal to document the era from the underground

References