There are few performers in Taiwan with as wide an appeal as Jody Chiang, as the frenzied competition to secure tickets to her farewell concerts over the past three days has proven.

After the 53-year-old announced last week her plans to retire from her four-decade-long music career, many have been left wondering: What will the Taiwanese-language music scene look like without Chiang, the biggest name in the genre?

Born in 1961, she began her singing career at the early age of 10, entertaining patrons at bars to support her poor parents, a budaixi (glove theater) puppet maker and food vendor.

“I would think: why are other children so carefree and so happy? They could play, but I had to go sing after school without getting any rest,” she once recounted about that period of her life.

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