Ricky Hsiao: Twice Blind, Yet with His 'Eyes for No One' Humor He Fell His Way to a Golden Melody Award

Born in Banciao in 1976, Ricky Hsiao's life trajectory is one of two encounters with darkness. Congenital cataracts meant he was born completely blind; surgery at age 4 restored limited vision, but a complication of glaucoma at 15 took away the light again¹. Yet that "inability to see" did not lead him toward tragedy — instead it made him the most life-resilient figure in Taiwan's music world. He is not only the first person to win the Golden Melody Award for Best Taiwanese Male Singer four times, but was also a judo national athlete representing Taiwan at the Para Games.

"Playing music without reading scores or lyrics — we are the most 'eyes for no one' (目中無人) group." — Ricky Hsiao, in the Life Line Band's 30th anniversary message.²

Born in Banciao in 1976, Ricky Hsiao's life trajectory is one of two encounters with darkness. Congenital cataracts meant he was born completely blind; surgery at age 4 restored limited vision, but at 15 he lost sight again due to a glaucoma complication¹. Yet that "inability to see" did not lead him toward tragedy — it made him the most life-resilient figure in Taiwan's music world. He is not only the first person to win the Golden Melody Award for Best Taiwanese Male Singer four times, but was also a national judo athlete who represented Taiwan at the Para Games.

From "Advantage in Disadvantage" to Complete Darkness

While attending the Taipei Municipal Mingmu School for the Visually Impaired, Ricky Hsiao during his low-vision period was the "guide" on campus — responsible for leading fully blind classmates across roads and serving food. One afternoon when he was 15, playing basketball, he noticed that a ball his teammate passed was becoming a blurry point. He tried washing his face with water, hoping his vision would return the next day, but what greeted him was complete white blankness¹.

The blow of this "second blindness" led him to close himself off for a time, retreating to the classroom rooftop to hold a guitar and scream. Music at that point was not performance — it was his only outlet. He began learning to re-map the world through hearing: judging spatial width by the sound of footsteps, mastering the position of soup being ladled by the sound of water. This extreme sensitivity to sound later became the source of delicate emotion in his musical composition.

Life Line Band: A Professional Path for Visually Impaired Musicians

In 1995, Ricky Hsiao recruited classmates from Mingmu School to form Taiwan's first all-visually-impaired pop band, "Life Line Band"². In an era when people with disabilities were generally seen as street performers or masseurs, Ricky Hsiao led the band members in touring north and south Taiwan, and even performing in Europe and America.

Curator's note: The significance of the Life Line Band is not that they "can play instruments despite not being able to see" — it is that they proved visually impaired people can form commercially competitive professional bands. This was a long-term campaign about "professional dignity."

"Auditory Counterattack" on the Judo Mat

The public knows Ricky Hsiao's singing voice but often overlooks that he was once a world-class athlete. Beginning to practice judo from elementary school's fourth grade, Ricky Hsiao relied on powerful "inner strength" and hearing to judge opponents' center of gravity, throwing his way into international competition.

• 1994 Beijing Asian Para Games: Won the bronze medal in the men's judo 60kg category.⁴
• 1996 Atlanta Paralympic Games: Represented Taiwan, placed 7th in men's judo.⁵
• 2025 World Masters Games Taipei-New Taipei: At the age of 48, returned to competition to win gold in the Para Judo men's 90kg category.⁶

During the 1996 Atlanta Paralympic Games, Ricky Hsiao's grandmother passed away in Taiwan while he was competing abroad, and he could not be there for her final moments. This regret was later transformed into the classic song "Grandma's Words" (阿嬤的話), which became known across Taiwan, weaving the toughness of the judo mat and the tenderness toward a loved one into Taiwan's collective memory.⁵

Golden Melody Records and Repaying Kindness with "Letting Go"

Ricky Hsiao's achievements at the Golden Melody Awards are legendary. He is not only a singer in both Mandarin and Taiwanese but has set near-unbreachable records in the Taiwanese-language music world.

• Four-time Golden Melody Award for Best Taiwanese Male Singer: 19th, 21st, 26th, and 29th editions.⁷
• Three Golden Melody Award for Best Taiwanese Album trophies: For True Love Songs, Missing You Will Be Afraid, and The Most Beautiful Flower.⁸

His compositional strength is also reflected in writing songs for others. The most famous story is writing "Not That Simple" for Huang Hsiao-hu. At the time Ricky Hsiao's father was doing home renovations for Huang Hsiao-hu and introduced his son, who had just started out. Huang Hsiao-hu not only mentored him but personally bought him a suit out of pocket. To repay this "maternal grace," Ricky Hsiao let go of a song he had planned to keep for himself as his signature piece. The song later became Huang Hsiao-hu's career peak, and brought Ricky Hsiao a stream of songwriting commissions.⁹

Dark Humor: The Highest Form of Self-Deprecation That Flips the Tragic Narrative

In recent years Ricky Hsiao has gone viral on social media with the image of "master of dark humor." He proactively posts photos of "reading books," "viewing an exhibition," and "driving," captioned with self-deprecating text such as "In the blind testing world, I call myself No. 2 because nobody dares claim No. 1."¹⁰

This humor is not contempt for disability — it is an extreme form of equanimity. By proactively exposing the absurdity of "not being able to see," he dissolves the excessive sympathy and awkwardness the public projects onto visually impaired people. When he can joke about himself, society truly begins to see visually impaired people as "ordinary people."

Curator's note: Ricky Hsiao's "dark humor" is a major step forward in Taiwan's disability culture. It shifts from a narrative of "please help me" as the disadvantaged, toward the egalitarian dialogue of "I can make jokes just like you."

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