Sorry Youth: Three Southern Boys Who Sang in Hokkien About the Loneliness of Working Far from Home — and Twenty Years Later Became the Voice of a Generation

30-second overview: In 2005, three Tainan men decided after the Spring Scream festival to form a fully Hokkien rock band. Problem: only Chiang-chiang had spoken Hokkien since childhood. Seashore Flavor (2012) used a milkfish on its cover; Brothers Shouldn't Be Without Dreams (2017) won the Golden Melody Award for Best Album Design and the Golden Indie Music Award for Best Rock; Awkwardly Good (2021) raised over 3.11 million NTD on flyingV; Noise Apartment (2024) broke their own crowdfunding record and won Best Rock at the Golden Indie Music Awards for the third time. From office-worker band to full-time musicians, over twenty years Vini, Chiang-chiang, and Zong-han's shared conviction has always been one sentence: "Everyone needs to be living well first — then the music will hold together."

One Milkfish Said It All

In 2012, Sorry Youth delivered their first album to record shops. The cover featured no band photos, no self-consciously designed rock poses — just one milkfish.⁴

For any Taiwanese person, that fish needs no explanation. Milkfish is the scent of Tainan mornings: a bowl of steaming congee, fresh milkfish belly, the clamor of the fish market at five a.m., and the sound of grandma calling people to eat in Hokkien. Three men who had come north from Tainan to work used one fish to say everything they wanted to say: we are from the south, we sing in Hokkien, we want people who have left home to hear a little taste of home.

Sorry Youth consists of guitarist Vini (Chang Sheng-wei), bassist and vocalist Chiang-chiang (Liang Hung-chang), and drummer Zong-han (Hsieh Tsung-han).¹ They formed the band in Tainan in 2005, "having grown up listening to rock music by the sea."² In 2012, carrying nine songs spanning six years of creation, they released Seashore Flavor in an unfamiliar city.

📝 Curator's note: A milkfish as the cover is an identity declaration and a statement of position. In a Taiwanese indie music landscape then dominated by English or Mandarin, Sorry Youth's choice was a complete aesthetic positioning — language, cover, sound, all saying the same thing at once.

The Difficulty of Hokkien — Only Chiang-chiang Grew Up Speaking It

Of the three, only Chiang-chiang had spoken Hokkien since childhood.³

This fact has a kind of counterintuitive honesty. Sorry Youth went on to become one of Taiwan's most prominent Hokkien rock bands — four all-Hokkien albums, three Golden Indie Music Awards. But two of the three came to Hokkien later in life, learning, struggling, then staying.

Chiang-chiang has said: "Sometimes I really envy Hsieh Ming-yu (謝銘祐) — or the King's Men theater troupe — they use such beautiful Hokkien. But Taiwan's education system didn't cultivate that in us, so it becomes very difficult. We're still trying."³

The weight of these words lies in their lack of defensiveness, their lack of emphasis. Outside the two easier frameworks of "language preservation" and "political statement," Hokkien is, for them, something more private: Chiang-chiang says he has always tried through his work to communicate with his parents, to let them know he is living well far from home. Hokkien is his way of going home.

The band's goal was to write Hokkien songs that "make grandpa and grandma nod in approval." To get there, they first had to learn to speak the language grandpa and grandma speak.

"Sometimes I really envy Hsieh Ming-yu (謝銘祐) — or the King's Men theater troupe — they use such beautiful Hokkien. But Taiwan's education system didn't cultivate that in us, so it becomes very difficult. We're still trying." — Chiang-chiang ³

The Office Workers' Consensus

For a long stretch after releasing the first album, all three had day jobs.⁸

Vini was a guitar teacher and music critic. Chiang-chiang worked in marketing for a food company. Zong-han handled event planning for music performances. All three had regular jobs — but this was a deliberately designed arrangement. Their consensus had been clear from the start: "Everyone needs to be living well first — then the music will hold together."³

These words carry a southern Taiwanese pragmatism. Rock music can be pure, but eating comes first. Vini has said: "Economic independence is incredibly important — and not the miserable kind of independence; you have to let yourself live comfortably." His clarity is in that sentence: only someone who can take care of themselves can sustain music over the long term.

Between 2012 and 2017, they worked their day jobs while spending five years preparing a second album. Those years were slow but solid. They eventually established "Seashore Flavor Co., Ltd." and began taking on music festival work, transitioning to full-time music.⁸ More than a decade of accumulation, exchanged for full-time status.

"Everyone needs to be living well first — then the music will hold together. That's our consensus." — Chiang-chiang ³

The Journey of Four Albums

Seashore Flavor (2012): Nine songs spanning six years of creation, milkfish cover. A foundation of post-rock, with the emotional content of Hokkien. The band's starting point — and their first attempt to look back at home from an unfamiliar city.⁴

Brothers Shouldn't Be Without Dreams (2017): Five years of waiting. Five years of day shifts and night practice, five years of life experience, became an album about working far from home — about the unspoken brotherhood and loneliness between Taiwanese men. 29th Golden Melody Award for Best Album Design; Golden Indie Music Award for Best Rock Album. A Hokkien rock band began to be known across Taiwan's music world.¹

Awkwardly Good (2021): The form of a short story collection — each song independent, each with its own characters.³ The flyingV crowdfunding campaign ultimately raised 3,115,568 NTD, six times the target amount.² Golden Indie Music Award for Best Rock Album, second time. Special guest Enno Cheng expanded the sonic landscape of Hokkien rock.⁷

Noise Apartment (2024): Returning to memories of renting apartments on the city's edges after graduating from university — calling those "romantically naive" times a "spirit time chamber."⁷ Nine songs; special guests Tsao Ya-wen and Hsieh Ming-yu. The flyingV crowdfunding campaign broke their own record again.² Golden Indie Music Award for Best Rock Album, third time. Three consecutive wins.¹

2019: The Old Men in Canada

In the summer of 2019, with Hong Kong's Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill protests underway, Sorry Youth performed at the Taiwan Cultural Festival in Canada.⁵

After the performance, a few elderly people came from the audience — veterans of the dangwai (outside-the-party) democratic movement, people who had been blacklisted by the Nationalist government decades ago and had been unable to set foot on Taiwanese soil for decades. In a foreign country, they watched young Taiwanese people sing in Hokkien, in a summer when Hong Kong's voice was carrying across the Pacific.

This encounter stayed in Sorry Youth's memory. Vini later talked about that period in an interview: you have to first understand what has happened on this land before you can face the future with a grounded heart.⁵ This also became the backdrop for creating their song Time Tends to the Just.

Culture is another kind of power. Those veterans had lost the road home — but the language they carried out, the songs they carried out, endured.

Twenty Years and Still in the Room

In 2025, Sorry Youth celebrated their twentieth anniversary.

What they announced for the anniversary was the "Live Handling" series: seven performances, ranging from the intimate space of Hao Chu breakfast in Taipei and a bowling alley in Yilan, to Legacy Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung, culminating at the Shan Meng Hai Shi Music Festival.⁶

Vini said: "Sorry Youth was born from Taiwan's indie music live scene, and we want to preserve the heat and organic quality of live performance."⁶

In 2026, they collaborated with Japanese punk band PEDRO on the single Outta My Way, touring both Taiwan and Japan. Hokkien rock now has listeners on both sides of the Pacific.

Twenty years ago, three men who grew up listening to rock music by the sea in Tainan began learning to write songs in Hokkien. Two of them had not spoken Hokkien since childhood — but they decided to keep learning, keep writing.

That milkfish is still there.