“My friend asked me, why don’t you sing good songs in Chinese?”, Peng said upon receiving the prize in Taipei. “I don’t think there should be language restrictions on singing.”
Cheng, speaking in Mandarin, thanked the Taiwanese language for “teaching me how to bow my head and slow down”.
In the indigenous language category, the Paiwan singers Kasiwa and Matzka rapped and sang in their native tongue, with Kasiwa getting the prestigious jury award.
While Taiwan has only 23 million people, its music scene has an outsized influence in the Chinese-speaking world, in part due to creativity unhindered by censorship.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen wrote on her Facebook and Instagram pages that at the show the love of music had “eliminated language boundaries between different ethnic groups”.
“Here, no matter what language everyone uses – Taiwanese, Hakka, indigenous languages, Mandarin, English and Japanese – they can all sing freely, which also brings us together.”
Disco queen Ouyang Fei Fei, one of two special contribution award winners and as famous for her big hair as her big voice, broke through in Japan in the 1970s singing in Japanese.
“Singing and performing have always been my dream. If I can, I will continue to sing and never give up,” Ouyang, now 73, told the audience.