Liang Jingfeng

– He is also mentioned in Wolfgang Bauer (1930–1997), Peng Chang, Michael Lackner, Das chinesische Deutschlandbild der Gegenwart: A. Deutsche Kultur, Politik und Wirtschaft im chinesischen Schrifttum 1970 – 1984.

Magazine''; the name of the magazine refers to a poem written in the 1930s by Tian Han, the "March of the Volunteers" ) and in Formosa Zazhi ( 福摩薩雜誌 Formosa Magazine).

Liang Jingfeng (梁景峰; also Liang Ching-feng, Liang Chingfeng; born 1944 in Gaoshu Township, Pingtung County) is a Taiwanese specialist on Taiwan nativist literature, especially native Taiwanese poetry since the 1920s.

Another subversive teacher was Liang's colleague Wei Lan-de (魏蓝德) who motivated students to write essays about Wang Tuoh (Wang Tuo 王拓;, b. 1944), Chen Ying-chen (Chen Yin-zhen 陳映真, b. 1937), Yang Ch’ing-ch’u (Yang Qingchu 楊清矗;, b.1940), Wu Cho-liu (Wu Zhuoliu 吳濁流 (1900–1976)), or Hwang Chun-ming (Huang Chunming 黃春明).

Wei also edited a Chinese-English journal called Jietou/Street - a name that had been suggested by Liang Jingfeng.

As one of the critics of non-political English-language folk rock (and of often quite sentimental pop music), Liang, just like his friend and collaborator Li Shuangze(李雙澤, b. 1949 – d. 1977), resented the increasingly dominant uncritical Westernization of Chinese and regional Taiwanese culture, including its musical culture, and discovered locally rooted issues that could be addressed in new Chinese language folk songs.

But the musical form found for instance by Li Shuangze remained partly indebted to that of simple Western tunes.

Liang continues to celebrate his regional Taiwanese heritage.

Chen had been imprisoned by the government for "subversive activity" between 1968 and 1973 and was again imprisoned in 1979, in the context of the crackdown unleashed after the Meilidao incident, also known as the Kaohsiung Incident.

In this, Liang paralleled the practice of other teachers at the Department of German and the English Department, most notably Wang Jinping (scholar and activist) (Wang Chinping 王津平).

He was a notable activist in the Tangwai movement that took to the streets in the mid-1970s in opposition to the KMT dictatorship and for democracy and the rights of workers, peasants and fishers.

In the 1970s, he was very active in the Tangwai movement or Democracy Movement.

Liang was active in the folk music movement scene and is known in Taiwan for writing the lyrics of the song Meilidao (Beautiful Island美麗島).

This song, composed by Liang's friend, the painter, writer, and composer Li Shuangzi, was the anthem of the Tangwai (or Democracy) movement in the 1970s and later became almost the unofficial anthem of Taiwan.

Liang Jingfeng pursued advanced studies in German at Heidelberg University in Germany.

In Germany, he translated poems by Bai Qiu (白萩 Pai Chiu, also Pai Ch'iu) together with Karlhans Frank.

In the mid-1970s, when he started to get involved in the folk music movement, he craved however, much like Li Shuangze and others, a folk song movement faithful to China's – and insofar as possible, the island's – heritage.

He saw in folk singers like Chen Da a genuine expression of the people's unalienated culture on the island of Taiwan that was still governed by a regime that facilitated cultural Americanization, despite avowed determination to achieve a Neo-Confucian Renaissance.

This small volume of poems was published in 1974.

The translation marked Liang's commitment to poetry by Taiwan-born poets.

Liang returned to Taiwan in 1976 and obtained a teaching position at the German Department of Tamkang University.

Liang focused on Heine.

He also focused on Taiwan's critical literature, especially poetry that had often been leftist and anti-colonialist during the period of Japanese colonial rule.

He published "Who is Lai He?"

(賴和是誰？) in the leftist democratic opposition magazine Xiachao 夏潮 under the pseudonym Liang Demin in 1976.

His students read stories and novels by Xiangtu Wenxue authors such as Wang Tuoh, Wang Tuoh Yang Qingchu (楊青矗) and Chen Yinzhen.

Since 1976, Wang Jinping, the feminist activist and Tamkang teacher Lee Yuan-Chen (Li Yuanzhen 李元貞 – the founder of Women Awakening), Liang and their friend Li Shuangze (李雙澤) formed what Tao Wei - the liberal chairman of Tamkang's German Department at the time - called, with a smile, a "Gang of Four".

They took a stand in the debate about xiangtu wenxue (Taiwan Nativist Literature that was attacked by the national media and they furthered a nativist folk music revival on campus. At the time, Liang Jingfeng pseudonymously published articles related to questions of Taiwanese culture in journals close to the Tangwai movement, such as the influential radical magazine Xiachao夏潮 (Summer Tide, often referred to as China Tide.), but perhaps also in 前進雜誌 (''Advance!

After his arrival in Tamshui in 1976, Liang was determined to help friends such as Li Shuangze to push ahead with their attempt, started in 1975, to convert the Western-oriented Campus Folk Music Movement into a socially critical folk song movement of singer-songwriters find an audience eager to embrace and develop their own songs.

Probably in 1976 or 1977, Liang wrote the lyrics for the song "Meilidao" (Beautiful Island) that was composed by Li Shuangze.

The song became the key song of the radically democratic opposition movement and for many, the unofficial anthem of Taiwan.

The song's name became the name of a critical opposition magazine, Meilidao.

Other songs created by the two were "We are the Young China" and "Little Friend, Do you know where the rice comes from?"

In 1977 or 1978, Wang was dismissed by the university because of his political activities; he then operated a bookshop in Tamshui and a hostel that let him keep in touch with students.

The journal was banned in 1977.

In 1979, Liang's, "Modern Aspects in the poetry of Heine" was dealt with in the Heine Jahrbuch 79 (Heine Yearbook), Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979, p. 263.

Stuttgart: Steiner-Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1989.

In 2011, Liang noted on his blog's website that he had returned to Bai Qiu, translating more of his poems – this time together with the German scholar Wolf Baus.

Silvia Marijnissen mentions Liang's book ''Selected Historical Archives: New Taiwanese Literature Under Japanese Occupation.

Part 4: Poetry.''