Enno Cheng: Writing the Most Honest Songs in the Most Unfamiliar Language — Seven Years from Coming Out in 2016 to Winning Two Taiwanese Awards at the 2023 Golden Melody Awards

30-second overview: Enno Cheng was born on March 19, 1987, in Yilan. Her father is Taiwan New Cinema director Cheng Wen-tang. She debuted in 2007 as lead actress, screenwriter, and composer in her father's film "Last Days of Summer," earning a Best New Performer nomination at the 44th Golden Horse Awards; released her first solo music album "Neptune" in 2011; publicly came out as gay on Facebook on January 3, 2016, and signed divorce papers with her former husband Yang Da-zheng (vocalist of Fire EX.) that same month; released her first all-Taiwanese-language album "Mercury Retrograde" in 2022; and won both Best Taiwanese Female Singer and Best Taiwanese Album at the 34th Golden Melody Awards in July 2023. In an album interview she said: "I decided to use a language I was not that familiar with, to make things difficult for myself" — using the difficulty of the language as a method to achieve creative honesty.

On the evening of July 1, 2023, at the 34th Golden Melody Awards ceremony.

Best Taiwanese Female Singer announced: Enno Cheng.¹ Best Taiwanese Album announced: Enno Cheng's "Mercury Retrograde."¹

A 36-year-old singer who had released her first solo album back in 2011, changed labels three times, fronted a band, written essays, acted in her father's films, came out publicly in 2016, divorced that same month, and won a Golden Indie Music Award in 2019 — winning the Golden Melody Awards for the first time, and doing so with a double win in the Taiwanese-language categories.

She said on stage:

"Taiwanese taught me to bow my head. It taught me to slow down, to think carefully about the weight of every word and phrase."²

This sentence condensed her working state while writing the 11 all-Taiwanese songs on "Mercury Retrograde." For someone who grew up in Taipei and was mocked by classmates for speaking Taiwanese, writing songs in Taiwanese was not a return to her mother tongue — it was learning a language again from scratch.

📝 Curator's note: The Taiwanese-language categories at the Golden Melody Awards are rarely awarded to artists who built their careers writing in Mandarin. Enno Cheng is an exception — she won the highest honor for Taiwanese female singer using "a language I didn't speak very well growing up."

A New Cinema Family in Yilan

Enno Cheng was born on March 19, 1987, in Yilan.³ Her father is director Cheng Wen-tang (born 1958, Yilan) — he joined the Green Team in 1984 to film social movement documentaries, then turned to feature filmmaking; his representative work "Murmur of Youth" won Best Film in the International Critics' Week at the Venice Film Festival and Best Film of the Year at the Golden Horse Awards.⁴

Her mother was a seasoned musician who performed at restaurants, was an accomplished guitarist, and had even competed on the long-running talent show "Five Lamp Award."³

So Enno Cheng was a child of a dual film-and-music household. She watched her father's sets from childhood, grew up listening to her mother's guitar. But when she attended school in Taipei as a child, speaking Taiwanese got her mocked by classmates — the gap between her Yilan family language environment and her Taipei school context planted in her a regret that would surface 30 years later.⁵

She studied Chinese Literature at Tamkang University, took French, took a leave of absence in 2007, and focused on creative work.³

2007: "Last Days of Summer" — Father and Daughter Together

Enno Cheng's first work was her father's film.

In the 2007 film "Last Days of Summer," directed by Cheng Wen-tang, Enno Cheng played the lead and also served as screenwriter and composer.⁶ Set in Yilan, it was the first collaboration between father and daughter. For this film, Enno Cheng was nominated for Best New Performer at the 44th Golden Horse Awards.⁶

In her father's 2009 film "Tears," she acted again and also composed the end-credit song "Sayonara," which was nominated for Best Original Film Song at the 46th Golden Horse Awards.⁷

On the set of "Tears," she worked with actor Tsai Cheng-nan. After hearing her sing "Sayonara," he told her:

"Your voice is very suited to singing Taiwanese. Young people really should write more Taiwanese songs!"⁸

That was 2010. She remembered those words for 12 years — when "Mercury Retrograde" was released in 2022, she voluntarily brought up that conversation in interviews.

2011–2015: Solo Music and Mighty Mouth Chocolate

In 2011, Enno Cheng released her debut solo album "Neptune."⁹ All in Mandarin. That was her native creative language at the time.

In 2012–2013, she founded the band "Mighty Mouth Chocolate" as lead vocalist, releasing "Night Factory"; this album was nominated for Best Band at the 26th Golden Melody Awards.¹⁰

During these years she also had another identity: actress. She continued taking film roles in Taiwan's cinema scene, but music was increasingly becoming her main focus.

In December 2013, she married Yang Da-zheng, vocalist of Fire EX.¹¹ The two had been together for nearly nine years.

📝 Curator's note: The Enno Cheng of 2011–2015 was a pure Mandarin songwriter. Her shift to all-Taiwanese on "Mercury Retrograde" in 2022 came 11 years later. Understanding that gap is key to understanding why she says Taiwanese "taught me to bow my head."

January 3, 2016: Facebook Coming-Out Statement

On January 3, 2016, Enno Cheng published a post on Facebook. An excerpt from the original:

"Over nearly nine years together, I have deeply loved Da-zheng's soul. Da-zheng has a wonderful heart, and his unconditional understanding and tolerance of me has never changed. But I kept struggling with my own self-understanding. After months of repeated conversations, we have together accepted the fact that 'I cannot love his body' ... because what I like is the body of a woman."¹²

By the end of that same month, she and Yang Da-zheng signed divorce papers.¹¹

The post was widely shared. She gave no television interviews, held no press conference, issued no lawyer's statement as follow-up defense — just a single Facebook post. The words themselves carried the full statement.

When later asked by reporters why she chose to make this public, her answer was:

"I am a creator. I must honestly represent my own state. I cannot lie... Music is different from acting. The her offstage is the singer onstage. Creation must be honest, or the work will betray you."¹³

This logic of "creative honesty" became the foundational principle of all her subsequent professional decisions, including why she chose to write songs in Taiwanese six years later.

2017–2019: Music and Essays

In the three years after coming out, she released two albums and a collection of essays.

• 2017 second solo music album "Pluto"¹⁴
• 2017 essay collection "Fuck It Club: 3D Monster Transformation Records"¹⁵
• 2019 third solo music album "Dear Uranus"¹⁶

"Dear Uranus" contains 10 songs, including three in Taiwanese. The single "Jade" won Best Alternative Pop Single at the 10th Golden Indie Music Awards.¹⁶ This was her first formal attempt at Taiwanese-language songwriting — but not yet an all-Taiwanese album; it was a Mandarin album with Taiwanese songs embedded in it.

The names of these three albums form a solar system axis: Neptune → Pluto → Dear Uranus. This was her own naming logic, a code for her personal creative chronology.

2022: "Mercury Retrograde" — In the Most Unfamiliar Language

In 2022 she released her first all-Taiwanese-language album "Mercury Retrograde." 11 songs. Producer: Chunho. Taiwanese vocal production: Ho Hsin-sui (ciacia).¹⁷

Why Taiwanese? In a joint interview with producer Chunho for Blow Music, she explained in concrete terms:

"I really wanted to demonstrate to everyone how difficult it is for me — this matter of communication, of properly getting out what I want to say from inside my heart. The approach I thought of was: I'll use a language I'm not that familiar with, to make things difficult for myself."¹⁸

This is the methodology behind "Mercury Retrograde": using the unfamiliarity of a language to force honesty. If she wrote in Mandarin, her creative work would fall into the phrasing and vocabulary she'd mastered over 10 years; writing in Taiwanese meant looking up every word, asking questions, reading things aloud to confirm. Slowing down, bowing the head, thinking carefully about the weight of every word.

Taiwanese vocal producer Ho Hsin-sui (ciacia) served as the gatekeeper of linguistic precision on this album: correcting lyrics and phrasing, ensuring the Taiwanese felt right, even re-recording previously released singles.¹⁷

Producer Chunho played another layer of role. He had worked with Enno Cheng for over five years, and starting in early 2020 began experimenting with incorporating Taiwanese into various musical styles, finding that Techno and Gospel worked particularly well with Taiwanese.¹⁷ This technical judgment became the musical foundation of "Mercury Retrograde": Taiwanese × electronic, Taiwanese × Gospel fusions, giving the album a sound completely unlike traditional Taiwanese songs.

Chunho also left behind one verbatim piece of creative advice to Enno Cheng:

"I kept telling Yi-Nung, you don't have to be so big-hearted."¹⁷

Meaning: he encouraged her to move away from a macro view toward her own inner dark corners. In "Mercury Retrograde"'s lyrics, personal emotional pits outnumber the grand banners of social issues — that may well be the result of this one sentence from Chunho.

The Childhood Mockery Over Taiwanese: The Hidden Root of "Mercury Retrograde"

Enno Cheng's idea for "Mercury Retrograde" didn't come in 2022. In an interview with La Vie, she voluntarily brought up a childhood regret:

"I have always deeply regretted not crossing the language barrier to understand her (grandmother) better."¹⁹

When she attended school in Taipei as a child, speaking Taiwanese got her mocked by classmates, creating a psychological barrier to learning it. By the time she grew up and wanted to communicate with her grandmother, the language ability was gone. This "too-late regret" layered on top of her memory of being encouraged to write Taiwanese songs by Tsai Cheng-nan in 2010; "Mercury Retrograde" in 2022 was how she paid back these two materials accumulated over more than 10 years, through a full Taiwanese-language album.

📝 Curator's note: The 2022 all-Taiwanese album was neither an "identity awakening" nor a "market strategy." It was a 35-year-old singer going back to deal with the thing that happened when she was 10 years old and mocked — using the artistic ability she now possesses to rebuild a language she was forced to abandon in childhood.

July 2023, Golden Melody Awards 34: Double Win — Taiwanese Female Singer + Taiwanese Album

On July 1, 2023, at the 34th Golden Melody Awards ceremony.

"Mercury Retrograde" was nominated for six awards and won the two biggest: Best Taiwanese Female Singer + Best Taiwanese Album.¹ From Enno Cheng's first album in 2011 to her double Golden Melody win in 2023, 12 years had passed.

In addition to the widely quoted line "Taiwanese taught me to bow my head," her acceptance speech contained another equally important passage, addressing the MeToo movement of that year:

"I would like to sincerely thank every person who has recently exposed their wounds before us all. It has been hard. I hope that the upheaval of this period, the discussions of this period, can bring us a safer, more transparent environment."²⁰

2023 was the most intense period of Taiwan's MeToo movement: it erupted in waves across politics, academia, media, and the entertainment industry. By placing these words in her speech at the Golden Melody Awards — a mainstream ceremony — Enno Cheng became one of the few winners that year to respond positively to public issues from the stage.

Yang Da-zheng Appears at the Celebration Party

After the 34th Golden Melody Awards ceremony ended, an unexpected figure appeared at Enno Cheng's celebration party: former husband Yang Da-zheng.²¹

Seven years after their 2016 divorce, Yang Da-zheng came in person to congratulate her. The two had what was described as "meaningful eye contact," and Yang was described as having "come with sincere warmth." Their relationship later went further: Yang Da-zheng became the head of Enno Cheng's management company, and the two collaborate with a "free-range" arrangement, meeting only about once a month.²¹

In another interview, Enno Cheng spoke about her definition of family relationships:

"No matter what, we would never betray each other — we would never choose to abandon you just because you are someone very different from who I am today."²²

These words can be applied simultaneously to her post-divorce relationship with Yang Da-zheng, her intergenerational creative relationship with her father Cheng Wen-tang, and her professional team relationships during the "Mercury Retrograde" project: her definition of "family" had expanded, no longer premised on marriage, bloodline, or legal relationship.

📝 Curator's note: Yang Da-zheng appearing to offer congratulations at Enno Cheng's 34th Golden Melody Awards celebration is something very hard to replicate in the Mandopop industry. The prerequisite was that both of them chose, when handling that relationship publicly in 2016, not to be melodramatic, not to accuse each other, not to make private matters public. Seven years later was when the conditions existed for them to stand again as friends at the same music industry ceremony.

Cheng Wen-tang's Reverse Influence

Enno Cheng's father Cheng Wen-tang belongs to the social activism → art generation within the New Cinema movement: filming social movement documentaries with the Green Team in the 1980s, then turning to narrative features whose subject matter remained heavy social issues.⁴

His daughter pulled him in another direction. In later interviews, Cheng Wen-tang mentioned that, influenced by Enno Cheng, he began focusing on love and family themes: narrowing his narrative scope from "national affairs" to "personal emotions."²³

This is an unusual intergenerational artistic migration: the father moved from activism to cinema, and the daughter pulled the father from activist films toward family films. In "Last Days of Summer" in 2007, Enno Cheng was simultaneously the lead actress and the screenwriter, making "father and daughter exploring subject matter together" a lived creative practice.

The Ten-Year Thread of "Creation Must Be Honest"

Looking back at Enno Cheng's career trajectory:

• 2007: Acting debut + screenwriter + composer
• 2011: Solo music album
• 2016: Facebook coming-out statement + divorce
• 2022: All-Taiwanese-language album
• 2023: Double win at 34th Golden Melody Awards

In between, things seem to jump around — but one underlying logic has never changed: honesty.

The logic of coming out publicly in 2016 was "creation must be honest";¹³ the logic of writing an all-Taiwanese album in 2022 was "use the most unfamiliar language to make things difficult for myself";¹⁸ thanking the MeToo movement's disclosers in her 2023 acceptance speech was the same logic: don't evade, don't embellish, don't coat difficult things in sugar.

That logic has pushed her across 16 years from Mandarin toward Taiwanese, from solo work to a band to cross-disciplinary work, from actress to singer to author to producer. Every step was a choice to "walk toward the difficult place."

"I Hope We Can Have a Safer, More Transparent Environment"

Enno Cheng's MeToo tribute onstage at the 34th Golden Melody Awards in 2023 was not an accident. It was an extension of the logic of her 2016 coming-out: if creative honesty is her requirement of herself, then using her platform as an artist in public settings to create space for others who need honesty is the socialized version of that logic.

She is not an activist artist. She doesn't march in the streets, doesn't organize social movements, doesn't tweet on every news event. But she used those few minutes on the Golden Melody Awards stage to say what needed to be said, and left it in the official ceremony's recording: that is her mode of public participation.

The child born in 1987 grew to 36. Her father is a New Cinema director, her mother a restaurant performer, her ex-husband the vocalist of Fire EX., and she herself is a creator who crosses four identities — actress, singer, author, producer. The line she said at the 34th Golden Melody Awards in 2023 — "Taiwanese taught me to bow my head" — is actually her methodology for all difficult things: not just language, but everything that requires bowing your head, slowing down, and thinking clearly.

What language her next album will be in, what themes it will explore — no one knows yet. But one thing is certain: it will be written in whatever way is most difficult for her at that moment, because that is the only work ethic she has believed in for 16 years.

Further reading:

• Wei Ru-Xuan (zh only: 魏如萱) — Another path in the same generation of Taiwanese female singers, "self-defining through vocal character" (Wei Ru-xuan's doll-like voice × Enno Cheng's Taiwanese honesty — two different self-identity mechanisms)
• Abao (Aljenljeng Tjaluvie) — Another breakthrough artist who took "using a non-mainstream language to win major Golden Melody categories" (Abao's Paiwan in 2020 Album of the Year × Enno Cheng's Taiwanese in 2023 Best Taiwanese — two points in time in the relationship between language and the Golden Melody Awards)
• Chen Chien-chi (zh only: 陳建騏) — A Mandopop producer's systematic defense against "non-standard sound"; Enno Cheng uses the non-standardness of language, Abao uses the non-mainstream nature of indigenous languages, Chen Jian-qi uses doll-like voices — three types of "vocal boundary expansion"
• Popular Music and the Golden Melody Awards (zh only: 流行音樂與金曲獎) — The structural significance of the Taiwanese-language categories at the 34th Golden Melody Awards in 2023
• Taiwan Popular Music (zh only: 台灣流行音樂) — The spectrum from "nativist resistance" to "contemporary tool" in Taiwanese-language songwriting
• Taiwan Independent Music (zh only: 台灣獨立音樂) — Enno Cheng's independent musician identity, from her Lady Zero era to "Mercury Retrograde"
• Yoga Lin — A same-generation singer-songwriter who stepped back from a Mandopop idol position and took on self-production; a contrast case (Enno Cheng uses an unfamiliar language; Yoga Lin uses self-production identity — two paths to "escaping definition")

References