Taipei: For decades, Taigi (Taiwanese) poetry was widely regarded as commercially unviable until a Taiwanese poet, Un Jio?k-kiSu, rewrote the script. Her poetry collection, "Ji t-hue Si¡m-Sih," written entirely in Taigi, vaulted to the top of the bestseller lists across major online bookstores - Eslite, Books.com.tw, Kingstone, TAZZE, Stepping Stone, and MOMO - within a day of its release on January 6. The book has since gone through five print runs in one month.
According to Focus Taiwan, this may be the first time a Taigi poetry work has achieved such strong sales. Li Bi-chhin, an associate professor in the Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages, and Literature at National Taiwan Normal University, highlighted this milestone during a dialogue with Un at the Taipei International Book Exhibition on February 7. Originating from Hokkien, Taigi has evolved into Taiwan's major dialect, shaped by influences from indigenous languages and Japanese. Li noted that Taigi poetry has historically struggled to find readers, partly because the language has long been regarded primarily as an oral language rather than a written one.
Un's poetry collection departs from earlier Taigi literary works, which often focused on Taiwan's political past and collective historical memory. Instead, it draws on the everyday experiences and emotional landscape of her generation. By choosing to write in Taigi, Un, a 27-year-old poet, hopes to challenge long-standing stereotypes about the language. In an interview with CNA, she expressed her desire to demonstrate that Taigi can look entirely different from what people usually imagine, potentially encouraging younger generations to engage with it.
Each poem in the collection is presented alongside its TSi-l´ Romanization and a Chinese translation. Un also recorded herself reading each poem, allowing readers who do not speak Taigi to experience the work through her voice. Born in Tamsui, New Taipei, in 1999, Un did not speak fluent Taigi until junior high school. It was then that she began to notice subtle but persistent attitudes that belittled the language.
In Taiwan, local languages are often viewed as outdated or coarse. Un recalled her experiences, noting that students in English recitation contests receive praise, whereas those performing in Taigi are sometimes met with remarks like, 'No one speaks it anymore - what's the use?' For Un, the language carries deeply personal meaning, as it was her grandmother's lifelong language. She believes that speaking in her grandmother's language could offer her a different perspective on the world.
Since 2025, Un has shared distinctive and lyrical Taigi vocabulary on the social media platform Threads, attracting more than 60,000 followers. She also founded an Instagram account, Ohtaigi, dedicated to sharing Taigi content, which has amassed over 144,000 followers. The viral popularity of her posts eventually caught the attention of a publisher, leading her to collect her poems and develop them into a book.
Un describes the Taigi language as both the material and the tool for her writing. She chooses each word deliberately, often consulting the Tai-Nichi Daijiten, a Taiwanese-Japanese dictionary compiled in the 1930s with about 90,000 entries. While browsing the dictionary, she rediscovered archaic yet evocative words and incorporated them into her poetry. For example, "Ji t-hue" describes dappled sunlight filtering through clouds or leaves, while "t®n-ai-hoo" refers to raindrops scattered like dust.
Despite the book's commercial success, Un expressed a bit of pity that most online retailers still categorize Taigi literature as Chinese literature. However, she noted with a smile that strong sales suggest people's perceptions of Taiwanese could change. "Sometimes, people need something abrupt like this to realize that we need a change," Un said.