Village Armed Youth

30-Second Overview: Village Armed Youth (農村武裝青年) was founded in 2007 by Chiang Yu-ta ("A-da") from Tianzhong, Changhua — the folk sound most frequently heard at Taiwan's social movement sites. From the Losheng Sanatorium (樂生療養院) to Dapu in Miaoli, they appeared at every major land rights struggle over ten years. In 2015, A-da returned to his hometown; for two years he lost the ability to create. In 2017 he was reborn with Roots, nominated for the 29th Golden Melody Awards. He refuses to be asked "are you still doing social movements" — he says returning to the land is itself revolution.

One night in 2007, a man who had recently been released from prison was speaking at the Losheng Sanatorium (樂生療養院). He was Yang Ju-men, known as the "White Rice Bomber," who had served three years for sending bomb letters to protest Taiwan's agricultural policy. In the audience was a philosophy graduate of Tunghai University, raised in Tianzhong, Changhua, named Chiang Yu-ta. After listening, he picked up his guitar.¹

Losheng Sanatorium (樂生療養院) itself was the site of a struggle. That facility was a shelter for Hansen's disease patients in Taiwan, facing demolition in the early 2000s due to an MRT construction project; a long-running preservation movement had made it a symbol of land and human rights issues. Yang Ju-men speaking there was no coincidence. One was asking about rural villages; one was asking about a sanatorium. That night, two lines of questioning crossed.

This founding story is almost a microcosm of Village Armed Youth's subsequent decade-plus: singing their own songs on someone else's land, finding direction within anger.

A Fluid Lineup, a Fixed Stance

Village Armed Youth has no fixed roster. At the minimum, it is just A-da holding his guitar alone; at maximum, six people take the stage — cello, moon lute, suona, erhu, Chinese flute all sounding together.² Regular collaborators include Lijun (cello), A-fang (rhythm guitar), and Tsai Hsien (bass), but at many protest sites, only A-da appears alone.²

"Rock music should grow from one's own land — it is life and strength, and the genuine cry of every person, thing, and matter on that land." A-da has said.³

Their name itself is a manifesto. The first album was called F**k! The Government (2009). Then came Return Our Land (2011) and Where Is Happiness? (2013) — each title a question or a demand.² No desire to beat around the bush.

Moon lute, suona, Chinese flute, erhu — Village Armed Youth's instrument lineup is itself a statement. Those sounds belong natively to Taiwan's rural villages, predating the "world music" label by generations; most people have simply moved away from those places and no longer hear them. A-da says music should grow from the land; the instruments he chose were already there, on that land.

Present at Every Struggle

From 2007 to 2015, Village Armed Youth appeared at almost every major land protest in Taiwan: Ketagalan Boulevard, the Environmental Protection Administration, the Legislative Yuan, the Executive Yuan, Losheng Sanatorium (樂生療養院), the Sanyingbu community, Zhang Pharmacy in Dapu, Miaoli (大埔事件).⁴

This list reads like an index of Taiwan's land movement over that decade. Village Armed Youth's position at those sites was different from the organizers, spokespersons, and advocacy organizations; they were there because those people needed someone to sing.

Singing at a protest site is a different thing from speaking from a stage. Speeches try to persuade; songs try to make people stop. Village Armed Youth's songs do not reduce things to slogan-like simplification — they let people feel grief in an angry crowd, let people know that grief is real.

"The City That Has Lost Its Memory" was written by A-da during a residency at the Shuandui settlement in Nantun, Taichung, and won the Best Folk Single award at the 5th Golden Indie Music Awards in 2014.⁵ The song's title is like an annotation for an entire history of the land movement: a city that has forgotten what it used to look like.

In Front of Zhang Pharmacy in Dapu

The Dapu Incident (大埔事件) was the bloodiest chapter of land struggles in that decade. In June 2010, the Miaoli County Government forcibly graded land, bulldozing rice paddies that farmers were cultivating; on July 18, 2013, County Magistrate Liu Cheng-hung sent in construction crews to forcibly demolish four households while the Dapu Self-Help Association was in Taipei to protest.⁶ Village Armed Youth had sung in front of Zhang Pharmacy.⁴

That space, a few months later, became the place where the pharmacy's owner, Chang Sen-wen, was found dead.⁶

[!note]
Zhang Pharmacy in the Dapu Incident was located in Jhunan Township, Miaoli County — one of the core conflict sites of Taiwan's land movement from 2010 to 2013. Chang Sen-wen disappeared in September 2013 and was found dead the following day in a nearby drainage ditch.

Village Armed Youth's presence was not ritual, not a show of position; they were witnesses. Witnessing is a harder role than advocacy: you cannot change anything, but you make the event remembered.

Back to the Fields, Losing the Voice

In 2015, A-da left Taichung and returned to Changhua, renting a traditional three-sided courtyard house (sanheyuan) in Ershuei Township.⁷

Outsiders assumed this was simply a "return to the homeland" story: rural life, organic farming, hipster aesthetics — the whole script. But over the next two years, he could not write a single song.

"In the two years right after I came back, I completely lost my creative ability. I realized my body was still stuck in a certain compression from the social movement world — many past songs were written under those conditions." He later said.⁷

That "compression" is the rhythm, tension, and temperature of the crowd at protest sites. Anger can be fuel, but that kind of fuel doesn't exist in a sanheyuan courtyard. A-da found no substitute. He spent two years sitting on the land, waiting.

"I grew up almost entirely playing in the fields, catching frogs in the irrigation channels, going there every afternoon after school. When I was young and jumped into the irrigation channel, I could see frogs right away, but now they're all gone." He said.⁷

He had come back, but those things had already disappeared. Disappearance is harder to write about than struggle.

Those irrigation channels, those frogs, those rural sounds from A-da's childhood that he was familiar with — they had all slowly disappeared without anyone noticing. Recording them with a guitar was the only way he could think of.

_Roots_ Grows from the Soil

In 2017, Roots arrived.

The album was nominated for Best Taiwanese-language Album and Best Album of the Year at the 29th Golden Melody Awards.⁵ More important than the nominations was the way it grew: carrying the smell of rural soil, not the smoke of the streets. Suona, moon lute, zhongruan, liuqin — Village Armed Youth's instrument lineup, which had been equipment at protest sites, slowly grew back to its original provenance.²

The music of Roots contains dialect, rural rhythms, and the everyday sounds A-da observed in Ershuei Township. Those sounds cannot be found at Taipei's protest sites; they require a person to truly live there before they appear. Two years of losing one's voice was the price — and the condition.

In 2020, Village Armed Youth was invited to perform at the Vancouver and Toronto Taiwan Cultural Festivals; their official introduction read: having supported land movements for many years, their music connects Taiwan's land and emotions.⁸ In 2023, the sixth album Songs for You was released. Six works (including one EP) spanning 14 years — each standing in a different position looking at the same land.

Another Shape of Revolution

"Some people say they haven't seen me appear at social movement venues these years. I feel my original intent has never changed. Even though I haven't appeared at social movement venues to sing, I believe I am more revolutionary than before, because I am revolutionarily focused on doing one thing: seeking those lost things I just spoke of, and doing my utmost to preserve them." A-da said.⁷

"I believe I am more revolutionary than before, because I am revolutionarily focused on doing one thing: seeking those lost things, and doing my utmost to preserve them."
— Chiang Yu-ta, Village Armed Youth

This passage is worth reading slowly. The revolution he speaks of is about preserving things, preventing memory from disappearing. Under that definition, a person trying to relearn the rhythms of the land in a sanheyuan in Ershuei, and a person singing on Ketagalan Boulevard, are doing the same thing.

A-da's return to his hometown was not without controversy in social movement circles. For some workers, it meant stepping back; for others, it meant there are always many paths within Taiwan's land rights issues. Village Armed Youth has not resolved this divergence, nor has it avoided it.

Someone asked A-da: are you still doing social movements?

He said he was more revolutionary than before. But he stands on a field embankment, not on Ketagalan Boulevard.

Village Armed Youth's songs burned on the streets, settled in a sanheyuan courtyard, slowly fermented through two years without a guitar. Land rights issues, after "letting farmers stay," reveal the real question: after staying, what do you have left, what do you still remember, can you still sing?

The answer A-da found — he named it Roots.