Chyi Yu

Chyi Yu (October 17, 1957), also known as Qi Yu, is a Taiwanese Mandopop singer who jumped to fame with her 1979 hit “The Olive Tree.” Hailing from Taichung, she became the protegé of the late composer Li Tai-hsiang and made her debut with the folk song “Diamonds & Rust,” winning the Golden Rhyme Award in 1978. Meanwhile, the Li Tai-hsiang-penned title track from her studio debut The Olive Tree (1979) turned her into a star overnight, and soon she found herself recording tracks for numerous feature films and receiving several accolades for her work. In 1985, Chyi Yu collaborated with Chinese writer Sanmao on the full-length Echo, an album that would go on to attain iconic status in the following years. Her first English-language album Stories arrived in 1987 and took the Taiwanese pop scene by storm, selling over 160,000 copies in just one month and winning the Hong Kong English Ranking Championship. Throughout the 90s, Chyi Yu delivered a handful of highly successful English albums, including 1997’s Camel·Bird·Fish, which won Best Chinese Female Singer at the 9th Golden Melody Awards. In the subsequent years, she turned to Buddhist music and made appearances in the reality shows Million Big Singer, Dream Star Partner, and Masked Singer Guess Guess.