Chen Ying-git

Chen Ying-git was born Chen Jin-zhu on 15 October 1953 in Guanxi Township, Hsinchu County, Taiwan. She had an older sister and a younger brother and sister. Her family was of Hakka and Atayal heritage; her maternal grandmother was an Atayal woman from Mawudu.

At 18, in her second year at a vocational high school in Taichung, she went with classmates to watch a show at a licensed private club for American servicemen. Her friends egged her on to sing two songs, and the club was so impressed that it hired her as a regular performer. Because her family's finances had declined, she left school to support them and began her singing career, working her way from Taichung to Taipei.

In Taipei she met the puppeteer Huang Chun-hsiung, and at 23 she recorded her first Mandarin song for Haishan Records, "Chun Feng", which became the entrance theme of a character in his glove puppet television dramas. As a young woman she was offered film work but turned it down, feeling she was too short for the big screen.

After 15 Mandarin albums she moved in 1983 from Haishan to Hsiang Cheng Records. When the singer Lung Piao-piao was delayed abroad and missed a recording session, the label, on the recommendation of the singer Kuo Chin-fa, had Chen record a Taiwanese Hokkien song instead. That first Hokkien release sold more than 300,000 copies, and the company issued 13 Hokkien albums in the next three years, each a strong seller. She became one of the leading Hokkien pop singers of the 1980s and 1990s, and her hits included "Feng Fei Sha", "Haihai Rensheng", "Qidai Zai Xianghui" and "Hu Wo Zui". She also sang a well known duet with Yu Tian. In 1999 she was nominated for best female dialect singer at the 10th Golden Melody Awards.

In 2003, after 81 albums, she gave the first solo concert of her career. From 2008 she was a judge on Formosa Television's talent show Ming Ri Zhi Xing, and in 2011 she joined the Phoenix management agency, for which she also produced a singing programme on Xiamen television. She appeared in a few films and in television dramas such as Feng Shui Shi Jia and Jia Zhuang, and hosted music programmes on Sanlih and Hakka TV. Her final single was released in 2024.

In 1976 Chen fell in love with a fellow singer. She later said she had used her earnings to support him and that promissory notes he signed carried her name; when his business ventures failed he left Taiwan, leaving her with debts of more than ten million Taiwan dollars. It took her seven years to repay them, a task helped by the huge sales of "Feng Fei Sha". In 1986 she met a music producer; they married in 1996 and divorced in 2003. That same year both her parents died, a loss she said left her in deep despair. In 2002 she called a news conference to deny reports that her debts came from gambling. She was a Buddhist.

In 2011 she borrowed 2.8 million Taiwan dollars from a friend and was later charged with instigating her sister to sign another sister's name as co-signer on a promissory note. The High Court sentenced her to three years and two months, and the Supreme Court upheld the sentence on 12 July 2023. She began serving it at Taoyuan Women's Prison on 23 August 2023.

Chen's health had been poor before she entered prison, and in custody she developed dementia, which led her to forget to drink water and caused acute kidney failure and sepsis. In 2024 she was granted medical parole and taken to Taipei Veterans General Hospital, where she spent time in intensive care before her condition improved for a while. Reports also mentioned a stroke and the need for dialysis, and the actress Yang Kuei-mei said shortly before her death that Chen could no longer speak.

She died at Taipei Veterans General Hospital at 7:05 pm on 12 August 2026, aged 72. The television host Yu Mei-jen announced her death on social media, and the general manager of her agency, Phoenix, confirmed it. Her family held a private funeral at the Taoyuan funeral services centre on 30 August 2026, closed to the public, after which she was cremated.

Chen Ying-git is remembered as one of the defining Taiwanese Hokkien pop singers of her generation, whose songs about hardship, endurance and the ups and downs of life mirrored her own story. "Haihai Rensheng", a song about life being as vast and changeable as the sea, and "Feng Fei Sha" remain karaoke and radio favourites in Taiwan, and colleagues including Huang Yee-ling and Huang Hsi-tien paid tribute after her death.