Journal • Sep 1, 2026 ｜ Past Issues 前期

Among the earliest writings traditionally attributed to Confucius is Spring and Autumn (/chun-qiu/), a terse chronicle of historical events. Its compressed form led to multiple interpretive works examining how particular choices of words convey the text’s unstated judgment9,10. A classic example is the distinction between 弑  and 殺. Although both characters mean “kill,” 弑 denotes killing committed by a subordinate against a superior. Confucius did not state the moral judgment explicitly; the judgment was implied in his choice of words.

In this issue, we use “Spring and Autumn Brushwork” as an analogy for linguistic choices that carry unstated meaning. Such brushwork, deployed in the promotion of Sarah Chen’s work with Jonathan Lee, contributed to how her career was subsequently narrated. We begin with the 1988 album Woman’s Heart.

On the back cover of Woman’s Heart stood Sarah Chen, carrying a large tote bag as she looked back apprehensively.11 To her left was a block of text in small font describing the album as reflecting women’s romantic life. After a long passage without mentioning Sarah Chen, the lines continued as follows:

李宗盛所制作的音乐，一向能唤起一个歌手、或者说女人不为人知的一面，展现出另一种潜力，赋予歌手、女人本身更丰富的个性空间。《女人心》这张专辑，歌曲本身都有一个戏剧性的情节和故事来刻画爱情生活，李宗盛让陈淑桦以更成熟、深刻的表达方式来诠释情感，令她纯净的音色，展现出多样的个性。这是李宗盛的新尝试，也是陈淑桦的新转变。

“Jonathan Lee’s musical productions have always been able to call forth a singer, or a woman’s unknown side, to reveal another kind of potential, and to grant the singer, or the woman herself, a richer individuality space. The “Woman’s Heart” album contains songs that use dramatic plots and stories to portray romantic life. Jonathan Lee makes Sarah Chen use a more mature and profound mode of expression to interpret emotion, and causes her pure vocal timbre to display a diverse range of personalities. This is Jonathan Lee’s new experiment, and also Sarah Chen’s new transformation. ”

The wording invites a reading reminiscent of Spring and Autumn Brushwork, particularly its allocation of artistic agency. But before analyzing its grammar, we must first place the promotion within the album’s production history.

When Sarah Chen began collaborating with Jonathan Lee in 1988, she was signed to EMI Singapore, with her Mandarin music production subcontracted to Rock Records12,13. She was already established as a Mandopop diva, the Golden Bell Best Female Singer14,15, with substantial influence in Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia16,17. Her 1985 album even outsold Michael Jackson’s Thriller in Malaysia18. More established than her Rock Records colleagues, Chen was considered the “standard bearer” of Rock Records19.

Jonathan Lee was a singer, songwriter, and producer signed to Rock Records. A few months younger than Chen, he called himself “Little Lee” in front of Chen20, respecting her seniority in reputation and age. But Lee was a rising Rock Records official by 1988, with news reports at the time tracking his ascent within the company21; he was promoted to vice president the following year22. The institutional power, however, lay with Lee, who confirmed in a 2003 documentary that Rock Records’ promotional team did what he told them20.

Woman’s Heart, released in February 1988, was Chen’s first collaboration with Lee. In a 1988 interview after the album release8, Chen said that the concept of the album originated from a meeting she had with the planning team:

企划部的人和我喝着咖啡，随意坐着闲聊，他们想了解这半年来，我的想法？将来，我有什么计划？就是这么轻松愉快的勾划出专辑大略的模型。

“People from the planning department had coffee with me, sitting around chatting. They wanted to know what I’d been thinking about over the past six months, what plans I had for the future. It was just like that, relaxed and easy going, that we sketched out the rough shape of the album. ”

The work, however, was unusually slow, she said. Lee would come up with 50 song titles one day, only to scrap them the next day. Observing his nonchalant attitude, Chen became worried that nothing would emerge from their work8. Their collaboration was difficult, with Chen jokingly saying that it emerged from bickering and “cold wars.”23

They had trouble coming up with a coherent theme. It went from “ten women’s stories” to “the entire world knows I love you” and, by the album release, to “Woman’s Heart.”8 Most of the songs drew on the ancient tradition of “men writing in a feminine voice,”24 with Lee writing gendered songs that only women could sing25. The result was an odd mix of male perspective in the lyrics and female gentleness in the singing. Its initial market reception was lukewarm. Critics found their style a mismatch, calling their collaboration a novel but unsuccessful attempt26, even questioning whether the heart in Woman’s Heart was Jonathan’s or Sarah’s27.

But Woman’s Heart was heavily promoted across four regions (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia). It sold 200,000 copies, becoming Chen’s bestseller at the time.

The seeds of the long-term damage to Chen’s legacy, however, were already present in the album’s promotional language. 

When I first read the album’s liner notes11, in late 2024, the lines “Jonathan Lee makes Sarah Chen use a more mature and profound mode of expression to interpret emotion“ caught me by surprise. I knew nothing about the context of this album or the institutional positions of the musicians. Still, I found the grammatical construction of the album’s promotional text unusual – and inappropriate. 

The Chinese promotional text uses a well-known grammatical device also familiar in English: the causative construction, in which an agent (causer) induces a causee to act28. In “Leah makes Olivia write a confession,” Leah is the causer and Olivia the causee. Although Olivia writes the confession, she does so at Leah’s direction, leading the reader to infer that it may not reflect Olivia’s choice. Agentive language is widely used in law, the newsroom, and everyday conversation29–31. It carries psychological force, biasing people to attribute the action to the causer32.

Accounts of artistic collaboration have a long history of making men the creative agents and women the subordinate partners33. Woman’s Heart did exactly that. In “李宗盛让陈淑桦以更成熟、深刻的表达方式来诠释情感”(Jonathan Lee makes Sarah Chen use a more mature and profound mode of expression to interpret emotion), Lee is the causer and Chen the causee. The grammatical construction implies, in a single stroke, that the credit goes to Lee and not Chen. In addition, it implies a hierarchical relationship between the two, with Lee holding authority over Chen. Worse yet, as the causee of the causative sentence, Chen’s part is grammatically subordinated to Lee’s causation.

What makes the promotion of Woman’s Heart striking is the extent to which it avoids assigning any agency to Chen. A Lee-centric promotion could simply have left Chen out, except to state the obvious fact that she sang the songs. But that banal sentence, “Chen sang the songs,” would make Chen the agent – she would be the one doing the singing. Apparently, even that gave Chen too much agency to be included. In its place, the promotional text depicts Chen exclusively through Lee’s actions.

The final sentence might seem to grant Chen some agency, but that is an illusion. The line, “This is Jonathan Lee’s new experiment, and also Sarah Chen’s new transformation” (这是李宗盛的新尝试，也是陈淑桦的新转变), extends the same allocation of agency. Lee was the one experimenting and trying new things. Chen was not experimenting; she was the one being transformed.

Whatever happened during the album production, its promotional language gave Chen no voice. Chen’s meeting that initiated the album8, the year she spent fighting with Lee over songs23, and the dozens of promotional interviews she gave for the album – none of those mattered. The liner notes, on the back cover of her own album11, set the tone for the loss of her agency. Whoever wrote, edited, and approved those lines directed Spring and Autumn brushwork at a woman’s agency.

After a respite during the promotion of Chen’s next album, “Tomorrow, Will You Still Love Me,” where the focus returned to her34,35, the Lee-centric promotion reappeared for their second collaboration, 1989’s “Talk to You, Listen to You.”

Early reports indicated that the album’s concept originated with Sarah Chen36,37: ”The new album, titled Talk to You, Listen to You, realizes a concept that Sarah Chen had wanted to present for many years” (题为「跟你说 听你说」的新歌辑是陈淑桦多年来想展现的一个构思). Chen then pitched the idea to Lee. But you wouldn’t have guessed Chen’s role in originating the album from reading its liner notes. The liner note, reprinted in a Taiwan magazine as “New Songs New Tunes,”38 stated:

《跟你说听你说》是李宗盛继《女人心》之后二度与陈淑桦合作。长达十个月的制作过程，即使是擅长洞悉女性情感的李宗盛，也丝毫不敢掉以轻心。从整体感受到词曲细节，从硬体设计到幕后工作人员的精挑细选，无不琢磨再三，力图完全掌握。对李宗盛而言，制作这张专辑不只是一项工作，也是自我挑战的最佳证明。“读音乐的属于音乐”，四位音乐工作者在这一点上达成共识，使得这张专辑简单却丰富，朴素却动人。

Talk to You, Listen to You is Jonathan Lee’s second collaboration with Sarah Chen following Woman’s Heart. During the ten-month-long production, even Jonathan Lee, skilled at discerning women’s emotions, did not dare to take it lightly in the slightest. From the overall feel to the details of the lyrics and music, from hardware design to the meticulous selection of the behind-the-scenes staff, every element was considered and reconsidered, in an effort to bring it fully under control. For Jonathan Lee, producing this album was not only a job; it was also the best demonstration of his willingness to challenge himself. “Those who read music belong to music.” The four musicians reached consensus on this, making the album simple yet rich, plain yet touching.

Lee was again positioned as the album’s agent. Chen was missing in action.

Sarah Chen did not immediately suffer from the agency-denying promotional language of Woman’s Heart. The album became her bestseller at the time39. Even in 1992, Chen still named this album one of her favorites40. There is no doubt that she contributed creatively to it, turning what might otherwise have been Man’s Heart into Woman’s Heart25. The song, “I am beautiful just for you,” is one of her loveliest ballads. No matter how the album was promoted, Chen’s agency lived inside the songs. Yet, the album’s promotional language helped establish a durable Lee-centered framing of Chen’s career3–5.

The agentive language did not merely reduce Chen’s role in these two albums; it threatened her core identity as an independent artist. Before Woman’s Heart, Chen was a Mandopop diva, Taiwan’s best female singer, a cross-regional singer with an international reputation, all through her own dedication, professionalism, and talent2,14,16–18,41. After Woman’s Heart, she was held up as a model of a singer whom Lee had successfully transformed, with her success narrated through his vision42.

Once placed in a subordinate role, stripped of agency by the very people working closest to her, Chen began to lose narrative control. Her later artistic endeavors, highly successful and award-winning, did not salvage her reputation as one of the women made famous by Lee.

Sadly, the damage to Chen’s legacy didn’t stop at the causative construction, which might have affected just these two albums. But a second linguistic device extended it backward across her career. This device, using metaphors implying criminality and disease to describe Chen’s past work, led to a near-total erasure of her past achievements. We will turn to this second form of brushwork, the “transformation” framework20, in the next issue.