Lien Ying: Six Years from 'The Dance Standard a Girl Group Should Have' to a Solo EP

30-second overview: Lien Ying (Erin), born April 27, 1999 in Taichung. She began studying ballet, folk dance, and Chinese classical dance in second grade, switching to street dance in high school. In 2020 she competed on Diamond Generation DD52, and in the second episode she said to mentor Pan Wei-Po: "I want everyone to know the standard of dance a girl group should have" — a line that became her defining label. The DD52 runner-up team Storm Spades debuted as HUR+, and she was the main dancer. In 2025 she released her debut solo EP EZ, a hip-hop/R&B record with Taiwanese-language elements and a street sound that deliberately avoided the safe ballad path. On her birthday in 2026, fans crowdfunded a stage at Dadaocheng where she premiered a new song, "A Second Too Late." She continues to release group albums while pushing her solo career simultaneously — the first girl group member in Taiwan to do this.

June 19, 2020. Episode two of Diamond Generation DD52.

104 girls were competing for a chance to debut. Storm Spades' Lien Ying stepped onto the elimination stage, facing C.Holly and Xi Le. She walked to the front, looked up at head mentor Pan Wei-Po, and said:

✦ "What I want to say is: no matter who my opponent is today, or how many people doubt me, I have no fear standing on this stage. I hope mentor Wei-Po will give me a chance. I want everyone here to know the standard of dance a girl group should have."¹

Pan Wei-Po chose her to advance.

That line became the anchor of the entire story.

The Girl From Taichung Who Danced

Lien Ying was born April 27, 1999 in Taichung². In her DD52 self-introduction, she described her dance background in a few lines:

✦ "I started studying ballet, folk dance, and Chinese classical dance in second grade of elementary school, and then in high school I started learning street dance, and I've been dancing ever since."³

The shift from classical to street dance is far more complex than "I just switched." Ballet and Chinese classical dance are about control, precision, and line; street dance is about groove, improvisation, and expression. Switching between two nearly opposite physical language systems involves more than technique — the fundamental challenge is relearning what dance even means.

She also mentioned she had "entered many open auditions and had been a trainee"³. She had been knocking on the idol industry's door long before DD52.

✦ "I've had star dreams since childhood — I've always wanted to become a performer!"⁴

In DD52's official player profile, she described herself this way: "I'm a very typical Taurus: when it comes to things I love and things I want, I'm very stubborn. I'm a slow warmer, but once I open up people find I'm actually pretty unhinged and scatterbrained."³

📝 Curator's Note
Lien Ying's dance background is different from the typical idol competition trainee. Korean-system trainees usually start from scratch, trained uniformly by their agencies. Lien Ying came in with over ten years of dance foundation: classical dance from second grade through high school, then street dance training from high school onward. She was a dancer who walked into the idol framework, not a blank slate manufactured by the system.

DD52: The Runner-Up at 55.4 Points

September 4, 2020. The DD52 finale. Storm Spades, with Lien Ying, scored 55.4 points — falling short of Storm Hearts' 57.9 — and took the runner-up position⁵.

After the show, producer Felipe.Z signed all six members of Storm Spades and founded HUR+. Lien Ying's position in the group was main dancer and sub-vocalist — the identity she had established on DD52 with that single line translated directly into her role at debut².

November 6, 2020: HUR debuted. DD52 won the 56th Golden Bell Award for Best Variety Program⁵.

Over the next three years, Lien Ying went through everything a new-generation Taiwanese idol group goes through: albums (REVELATION in 2021, Crimzon in 2024), concerts (Syntrend Creative Park, Legacy Taipei), competing on Next Girlz as a nine-member group, crowdfunding a Korean promo trip⁶.

Throughout the group's activities, she was consistently the one who drew eyes. Jasmine held the center position, but Lien Ying's force and physicality in nine-person choreography pulled gazes in involuntarily.

The line she delivered in DD52 episode two — "the standard of dance a girl group should have" — was not just talk. She delivered on it at every single performance.

A Second Track Outside the Group

In 2025, Lien Ying did something that had almost no precedent among Taiwanese girl group members: she released a solo EP while the group continued its full activity⁷.

In Korea, this is a mature industry mechanism. BLACKPINK's four members all have solo albums; TWICE members have been releasing individual work one by one. Group and solo are two parallel tracks, feeding each other: group activity builds popularity, solo activity expands the audience, neither stops.

In Taiwan, this dual track barely exists. Taiwanese idol groups are already rare; groups that survive more than three years are rarer still. Most groups are depleted just sustaining group activity — solo work for individual members is an unaffordable luxury.

But Lien Ying did it. In January 2026 she released the group's third album 9OF9 ARCANA with HUR+; in late April the whole group flew to Bangkok. Group commitments proceeded without missing a beat, and the solo track moved simultaneously. And she chose to test the waters one song at a time.

In December 2024, she first collaborated with Jin-cheng and Mongolian rapper GINJIN on "TAKE A CHANCE." In May 2025 she released "Cherry Pie"; in September she duetted with Babi on "DIE 4 YOU," with an official visualizer MV⁶. Three singles in six months traced a path from collaboration to solo, testing market appetite for "Lien Ying solo."

Then came the proper EP. December 3, 2025: EZ released. Five tracks⁷:

The tracklist makes her direction clear: hip-hop and R&B. Not the safe ballad, not the healing path common among Mandopop women. Most strikingly, track four, "那系哩欸歹誌 Remix," features Taiwanese. An idol-competition-origin girl group member putting Taiwanese hip-hop on a solo EP is almost an act of defiance within the Taiwanese idol context⁷.

At the pre-EP signing event on November 30, 2025, Lien Ying personally proposed a "quick-change" undressing stage number — a sudden costume reveal embodying the concept of "female bravery, making it look EZ"⁸.

When a reporter asked whether the level of exposure was too bold, she replied:

✦ "I dress pretty openly anyway — I don't think it's bold at all!"⁸

In the same interview, she said something else:

✦ "Jolin is my goddess. I still have a lot to learn from her!"⁸

Jolin Tsai — the woman who went from "last in dance class" to Mandopop's queen doing aerial rings thirty feet off the ground — is the idol Lien Ying publicly acknowledges. The thread is interesting: Tsai spent twenty-five years going from "not cut out for dancing" to performing aerial acrobatics at altitude, expanding the idol framework from within. Lien Ying is walking a similar road in her own way, starting as a dancer and stretching the frame.

📝 Curator's Note
Taiwan Hip-Hop Voice Podcast S3EP.89 devoted an episode to interviewing Lien Ying, titled "From Demonstrating a Girl Group's Dance Standard to Redefining the All-Around Singer-Dancer"⁹. This title precisely describes her arc from DD52 to solo EP: in 2020 she defined "the girl group dance standard," and in 2025 she liberated herself from that definition.

Fans Built a Stage in Dadaocheng

April 11, 2026, around Lien Ying's birthday: something happened. Her fans (who call themselves "Leopard Disciples" [豹徒]⁴) crowdfunded a birthday support stage in Dadaocheng¹⁰.

Organized by fans themselves. Funded by fans themselves. Executed by fans themselves. On stage, Lien Ying premiered a new song, "A Second Too Late"¹⁰.

Almost simultaneously, CheerSPOT ran simultaneous support ads for Lien Ying's EP EZ across Taiwan, Japan, and Thailand, limited to five hundred sets¹¹.

Birthday support, crowdfunded stage, cross-country simultaneous support ads. All of this is standard K-pop fan culture infrastructure. Korean idol fans book subway ads, coffee shop support events, and LED billboard campaigns for birthdays — a well-worn playbook. But these things happened for a Taiwanese girl group member, in Dadaocheng — one of Taipei's oldest neighborhoods — rather than the LED walls of Taipei's east side.

💡 Did You Know
Lien Ying's fans are called "Leopard Disciples" (豹徒), nicknamed "Dongquan Spicy Sauce" (東泉甜辣醬)⁴ — a Taichung-local in-joke only Taichung people would understand. Her Instagram @realerin6 has 136,000 followers⁴, and her Spotify monthly listeners exceed 5,000⁷. By K-pop standards these are small numbers; within Taiwan's idol ecosystem, a girl group member's personal account with that follower count says something.

No Compromise

In a 2024 interview with NIUSNEWS, Lien Ying shared her core belief: effort doesn't guarantee success, but without effort, success is guaranteed not to come⁴.

In that same interview, when asked how she handles criticism — people who say she has no right to be called the dance representative, people who criticize that she never closes her mouth in photos — her response:

✦ "It didn't hurt me at all — I actually found it kind of funny."⁴

The same piece noted that she has a dedicated space at home for displaying fan-made support items and cards. She once attended a female fan's recital as a surprise guest, and was moved to tears seeing the fan's glowing expression⁴.

She describes herself as "super action-oriented" and says she "can't let an idea stay in my head for more than a week"⁴. This quality explains a lot: why she dared deliver that line in DD52 episode two, why she crossed into solo territory while still in group development, why the quick-change number at the signing event was her own idea.

She doesn't wait for others to give her permission.

✦ "Effort doesn't guarantee success, but without effort success is guaranteed not to come."
"You only live once — live in your own life, chasing the goals you want."⁴

Six Years Later, That Line

Summer 2020. A twenty-one-year-old girl from Taichung stood on an idol competition stage and said: "I want everyone to know the standard of dance a girl group should have."

Six years later in 2026, she has gone from main dancer in a girl group to having her own EP, her own musical style, her own fan community, and her own simultaneous support ads in three countries. Her fans built a stage in one of Taipei's oldest neighborhoods for her to sing a new song.

Has the line been delivered on?

Perhaps a more accurate formulation is: that line is growing new meaning. In 2020 Lien Ying was defining "the standard of dance a girl group should have." In 2026 she is defining something broader — how much a Taiwanese girl group member can do simultaneously. Group album. Solo EP. Hip-hop collaborations. Taiwanese-language tracks. Three-country support. Dadaocheng stage. All in parallel. All her.

The EP is called EZ. Make it look easy. But every step to get here was anything but.

Starting dance in second grade, transitioning in high school, being a trainee, entering auditions over and over, staking everything on one line in DD52 episode two, surviving with the runner-up group through years when even the champions couldn't hold on, releasing a solo EP in an environment where almost no Taiwanese girl group member had done it, having fans build a stage in Dadaocheng. Every step looked like "this path should end here," and every step she took one more forward.

"Effort doesn't guarantee success, but without effort success is guaranteed not to come" is the belief she wrote in that interview. Walking it out over six years, she added four more words in action: never stop.

Further Reading

• HUR+ — Lien Ying's group. DD52 runners-up; the only one of the three debut groups still releasing albums six years later
• Taiwan's New Idol Generation — From DD52 to CHUANG ASIA, Taiwan's idol competition industry experiments
• Jolin Tsai — Lien Ying's acknowledged "goddess." Another story of starting as a dancer and expanding the idol framework
• Yang Cheng-Lin — DD52 head mentor. From 4 in Love to Ambiguous 2025 — twenty-five years
• Tzuyu — Another Taiwanese girl finding her place in the idol system

References