In 1986 he was flipping through an issue of Minzoku Taiwan, a magazine founded in 1941, when he came across a column written and illustrated by the Japanese painter Tetsuomi Tateishi. Greatly moved by it, he edited and translated it for a series of daily columns in the Independence Evening Post's evening supplement. In graduate school, Xiang Yang began, untutored, to make a plate for woodcut prints.
1986 年，他翻讀創刊於 1941 年的《民俗台灣》雜誌，被日治時期畫家立石鐵臣主刻、主筆的「台灣民俗圖繪」專欄所感動，於是著手整理、翻譯，在《自立晚報》副刊開闢專欄，逐日連載。