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Teng Li-Chun (p=Dèng Lìjūn; 29 January 1953 – 8 May 1995), commonly known as Teresa Teng, was a Taiwanese singer, television personality, musician, and philanthropist. Referred to by some as the "Eternal Queen of Asian Pop", she is considered to be one of the most successful and influential Asian artists of all time.Sources:
Teng is recognized as a cultural icon for her contributions to Chinese pop, giving birth to the phrase, "Wherever there are Chinese-speaking people, there is music of Teresa Teng." A polyglot, Teng's music has transcended geographical, linguistic, and political boundaries across Asia for several decades.
With a career spanning almost 30 years, Teng established herself as a dominant and influential force in Asia throughout most of her career, particularly in East Asia and Southeast Asia, and to some extent South Asia. Teng is credited as the Far East's first pop superstar and a pioneer of modern C-pop — a major force in the development of the Chinese music industry by incorporating western and eastern styles into her music, replacing the most revolutionary songs then prevalent in mainland China and laying the foundation for modern Chinese popular music.
Teng recorded more than 1,700 songs throughout her career, in her native language, Mandarin Chinese, but also Hokkien, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Japanese, Indonesian, English language, and Italian language. Teng is considered instrumental in bridging the political and cultural divides across Chinese-speaking regions. She was one of the first artists to connect Japan to East and Southeast Asia. In Taiwan, Teng rose to fame for entertaining the armed forces and singing patriotic songs that appealed to the people of the island. She was nicknamed "the patriotic entertainer" and "the soldiers' sweetheart". To date, Teng's songs have been covered by hundreds of artists worldwide.
Teng has sold over 48 million albums, excluding sales in Mainland China, according to the IFPI. In 1986, she was named by Time as one of the seven greatest female singers in the world. In 2009, in an online poll by a Chinese government web portal to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, Teng was deemed the most influential cultural figure in China since 1949 with 8.5 million votes. On the eve of International Women's Day in 2010, she was named the most influential woman in modern China in a poll conducted by various Chinese media outlets. Teng was inducted into the Popular Music Hall of Fame at the Masao Koga Museum of Music in Tokyo in 2007, making her the only non-Japanese person to be inducted.
The only daughter among five children, Teng was raised in a poverty-stricken Kuomintang family and spent her early childhood in military dependents' villages, first in Yunlin and then in Pingtung City. In 1957, Teng's father retired and then worked selling cakes to make ends meet. Teng received her early education at Luzhou Elementary School in Luzhou, Taipei County, Taiwan.
Teng was exposed to music at an early age through her music-loving parents. Her father was a Peking opera enthusiast, and her mother appreciated Huangmei opera, often accompanying Teng to Chinese movie theatres and opera houses. At age six, Teng began voice lessons through an acquaintance of her father, who instructed an Air Force band. Considering the environment of 1950s Taiwan under martial law, Teng's first mentor introduced her to singing before military audiences, a practice Teng continued throughout her life.
Teng won her first major prize in 1964, when she sang "Visiting Yingtai" from Shaw Brothers' Huangmei opera movie, The Love Eterne, at an event hosted by the Broadcasting Corporation of China. The following year, Teng went to attend Ginling Girls' High School in Sanchong, Taipei County, to further her studies. However, due to a conflict between her performance and studies, forced by family economic factors, Teng dropped out of school in the second year and pursued her career as a singer professionally. Teng was soon able to support her family with her singing.
Teng's albums sold well, and she eventually got an opportunity to record a theme song for Jingjing, Taiwan's first televised series. She then did a promotional tour that attracted attention in the media. Teng's first taste of fame came in 1968 when a performance on the popular Taiwanese music program The Gathering of Stars led to a record contract. She released several albums within the next few years under the Life Records label in Hong Kong. During these years, Teng recorded several top hits, such as "Remembering Mama" and "The Moment I See You, I Smile". She held concerts in Southeast Asia, drawing big crowds throughout the region. Teng's earnings from performing and recording eventually afforded her family a comfortable life; they moved from Luzhou District to Beitou District, Taipei, where they bought a home.
By the 1970s, Teng's music style had changed; she fused pop and opera styles and incorporated Western jazz in order to further expand her market. Teng's popularity boomed in Asia after she released several albums in multiple languages. In April 1979, Teng held her first concert in Vancouver, Canada. On her next trip, Teng toured major US cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 1980, she was invited to perform at Lincoln Center in New York and the Los Angeles Music Center in California, becoming the first singer of Chinese descent to make a headline there. Upon her return to Taiwan, Teng went on a Southeast Asian tour in 1981, drawing 35,000 attendees in Malaysia. She continued to hold large-scale concerts in Hong Kong and the Southeast Asian region almost every year. In 1983, Teng performed a series of concerts at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. They met with tremendous success. Teng gave many free concerts throughout most of her career to help the less fortunate or raise funds for charities. The funds collected from her concerts were donated to public welfare.
In the early 1980s, continuing political tension between mainland China and Taiwan led to her music, along with that of other singers from Taiwan and Hong Kong, being banned for some years in mainland China, describing it as too "bourgeois" and "corrupt" by Chinese authorities. In spite of the ban, Teng's songs defied the censorship and penetrated China's iron curtain. Her popularity continued in China through cassettes sold on Black market, with fans paying up to a month's rent for pirated cassettes of her songs. Teng's songs continued to be played everywhere, from nightclubs to government buildings, and the ban was soon lifted. Teng became almost as well known in mainland China as the country's leader. Her fans nicknamed her "Little Deng" because she had the same family name as Deng Xiaoping; there was a saying that, by day, everyone listened to "old Deng" because they had to. At night, everyone listened to "Little Teng" because they wanted to. Shanghai Party newspaper Wenhui Bao expressed fears that Teng's songs may erode the revolutionary spirit of the (Communist) Chinese. Faced with this solid wall of popularity, mainland China ceased its restrictions on her music from the mid-1980s onward.
I have one small desire. I hope everyone will like these songs, and will learn these songs so that the flourishing begonias within its China's ten million square kilometers and the treasures of this 5000-year-old culture can be handed down from generation to generation through song. And through song, I hope our posterity will never forget the happiness, sadness, and glory of being a "Chinese" person.
The album achieved widespread commercial success, selling over 5 million copies throughout Asia, making it the best-selling Chinese music album as of August 2008. It received a positive response from both the public and critics, commending Teng's outstanding interpretation of the ancient poems and successfully projecting classical Chinese literature into a contemporary popular music style. It was well accepted in Southeast Asia and went gold on the first day of its release in Hong Kong. Yang Yanxing, a professor at Tianjin Conservatory of Music, greatly praised the album, describing it as "the finest work of the Chinese music circle". In March 2012, Pu Xiqian from the China News Service called the album a "perfect combination of poems and music". Later, Teng started working on completing a sequel to the album. However, due to changes in the surroundings of music, as well as her deteriorating health and other reasons, she failed to realize her wish.
In 1987, Teng released the Mandarin version of the album I Only Care About You. After that, owing to her health issues, she virtually stopped participating in commercial activities and gradually entered a semi-retired state. Teng performed in Paris during the 1989 Tiananmen student protests on behalf of the students and expressed her support. On 27 May 1989, over 300,000 people attended the Concert for Democracy in China (民主歌聲獻中華) at the Happy Valley Racecourse in Hong Kong. One of the highlights was her rendition of "My Home Is on the Other Side of the Mountain".
Though Teng performed in many countries around the world, she never performed in mainland China. During her 1980 TTV concert, when asked about such a possibility, Teng responded by stating that the day she performs on the mainland will be the day the Three Principles of the People are implemented there—in reference to either the pursuit of Chinese democracy or reunification under the banner of the ROC.
In 1982, her dual album of Teresa Teng's Concert Live became another platinum album after hitting the market. Teng became a household name in Hong Kong and held a concert at Queen Elizabeth Stadium the same year. Her second album, Strolling Down the Road of Life (漫步人生路), released in 1983, achieved even greater success than her predecessor. It became her fifth consecutive album to be awarded platinum, a record-breaking win among all singers in Hong Kong. Teng's popularity reached its peak by the end of 1983 with six straight sold-out concerts at the Hong Kong Coliseum. These concerts broke all sorts of Hong Kong records and played to a combined total audience of about 100,000 people. The concert, named A Billion Applause Concert, was performed in Hong Kong from 29 December 1983 to 3 January 1984, in honor of her 15th year as a performer. A year later, Teng was awarded a special medal by PolyGram Hong Kong as a tribute to her success for having sold more than five million copies in Hong Kong. By 1988, the IFPI Hong Kong had certified seventeen of her albums as platinum, making her the artist with the second most platinum albums of all time, only behind Alan Tam.
After a long absence, Teng returned to the Japanese market on 21 September 1983 and released her first single "Tsugunai" (Atonement) after her comeback on 21 January 1984. The single did not receive a good response initially; however, after a month, sales started to pick up, and seven months later, "Tsugunai" eventually ranked eighth on the Oricon Chart and first on the Japan Cable Broadcasting Chart. By the end of the year, sales surpassed 700,000 copies, and final sales reached a million copies. Teng won the top award of 'Singer of the year' from Japan Cable Award. "Tsugunai" won the most popular song category and stayed on the Oricon Chart for nearly a year. The success broke all the sales records of her previous period (1974–79). On 21 February 1985, Teng's next single, "Aijin" (Lover) topped the Oricon Chart and Japan cable broadcasting request chart in the first week of its release. The song remained #1 for 14 consecutive weeks, and sales broke the 1.5 million mark. With "Aijin", Teng won the 'Singer of the Year' for the second time. Moreover, she was invited to perform in Kōhaku Uta Gassen, which represented a high honor that is restricted to the top performers of the year in the Japanese music world.
Teng's next single, "Toki no Nagare ni Mi o Makase" was released on 21 February 1986. The single topped both the Oricon and Japan Cable Broadcasting Chart, and sales of the single reached 2.5 million in the Asian market, becoming one of the most popular singles in Japan that year. Teng won the Japan Cable Award for the third time in a row. She was invited to perform in Kōhaku Uta Gassen for the second time. Teng became the first-ever artist to achieve three consecutive wins of this Grand Prix, also known as Japan Cable Award. She also remains the only foreign singer to win this award for three consecutive years in the history of Japanese music (1984–86). Teng gave her last solo concert at the NHK Hall in Tokyo in 1985 before semi-retiring from the entertainment circle.
In 1980, a year after the incident, she was allowed to return to Taiwan on condition of cooperation with the Taiwanese government. Teng performed for the Taiwanese troops again, and the income from her performances was donated to the "Funds for Self-Improvement and Patriotism". In August 1981, Teng performed for the troops for one month, touring military sites all over Taiwan. She visited the generals of the army, navy, and air force and sang for them. These performances were broadcast on TTV's special program named Teresa Teng on the Frontline. Due to her vigorous devotion to soldiers in Taiwan, Teng was awarded the "Patriotic Entertainer" medal by the government information office. These frequent performances for the troops garnered her the nickname "the soldiers' sweetheart" by the media. In 1988, the death of President Chiang Ching-kuo marked the end of martial rule in Taiwan. In the early 1990s, Teng returned to entertain the troops again, with her last performance being in 1994.
Teng continued performing for philanthropic causes throughout the 1970s in Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. In 1980, she raised over $1 million USD for Yan Chai Hospital in Hong Kong and donated the proceeds of her show in Taiwan to that country's national trust fund. In January 1982, Teng held a concert at the Queen Elizabeth Stadium in Hong Kong, and the first proceeds were used for charitable donations; in August, she donated NT$160,000 to build a water tower in a village in northern Thailand and introduce a drinking water system. In 1985, Teng held a solo concert at the NHK Hall in Tokyo, Japan, the proceeds of which were donated to charity. She made a special trip to Hong Kong in July 1991 to participate in the disaster relief program of ATV's "Love for East China" as a special charity performance guest to raise funds. Teng gave her last performance in 1994 in Taiwan, a year before her sudden and unexpected death.
According to Teng's maiden name character, Yun, the grave was named "Yun Yuan". The gravesite features a golden-colored, life-size statue of her, and a large electronic piano keyboard set in the ground that can be played by visitors who step on the keys. On the tombstone, the head of Teng is carved. The coffin lid behind the tombstone is polished with black marble. Behind the coffin lid is a stone sculpture. The upper half is a lying portrait of the singer, and the right side of the lower half is inlaid with a color photo of her, with the words "Deng Lijun, 1953–1995" written on the left side. On the right side of the coffin lid, there is a huge stone with the words "Yunyuan" inscribed by James Soong, Governor of Taiwan Province. On the left side of the coffin lid, there is a stone stele on which is engraved with the epitaph: "Here lies a superstar who dedicated her life to singing." The memorial is often visited by Teng's fans.
In May 1995, Shanghai Radio host Dalù dedicated the Sunday morning broadcast to the Taiwanese singer, who had died a few days earlier. Spreading her songs was banned in mainland China and the journalist was formally warned for this act. In 1995, a tribute album, A Tribute to Teresa Teng, was released, which contained covers of Teng's songs by prominent Chinese rock bands. In May 2002, a Wax sculpture of Teng was unveiled at Madame Tussauds Hong Kong. A house she bought in 1986 in Hong Kong at number 18 Carmel Street, Stanley, also became a popular fan site soon after her death. Plans to sell the home to finance a museum in Shanghai were made known in 2002, Taiwanese diva's home 'for sale' . BBC News, 29 July 2002. Retrieved 2 January 2007. and it was subsequently sold for HK $32 million. It closed on what would have been her 51st birthday on 29 January 2004.. HKVP Radio, Dec 2004. Retrieved 2 January 2007.
Numerous musical and non-musical figures have cited Teng's music a major influence on their work. These include singer Faye Wong, Jay Chou, Jane Zhang, Kazukiyo Nishikiori of Japanese pop group Shonentai, Tetsuya Murakami of The Gospellers, Junko Akimoto, Rimi Natsukawa, "father" of Chinese rock Cui Jian, Romanian singer Cristina Boboacă,Sources:
fashion designer Vivienne Tam, Nobel Prize laureate and writer Liu Xiaobo, poet and writer Xu Pei, manga artist Kenshi Hirokane, filmmaker Jia Zhangke, as well as painter and sculptor Jian Guo,Sources:
Teng's songs were centered on a range of subjects, most primarily love and human relations—the most lacking elements in mainland culture at the time. By the early 1970s, as rates of radio ownership began to increase, especially of cheap and portable transistor models, listening to Teng's music rose in popularity. Author Ah Cheng recalled hearing her music for the first time in 1975 as a sort of excitement and extreme addiction that he and his friends would press their ears to the wooden frame of a shortwave radio only to get her voice heard. His account of his internal exile in the mountains of Yunnan is better representative of this phenomenon:
Yunnan was endowed with a magnificent geographical gift: you could hardly hear central people's radio, and the newspaper would take days to make its way into the mountains and then be collected at the party's secretary's house, where you could ask him to tear off a strip when you wanted to roll up a cigarette. For people who listened to enemy radio, radio from the center, or the official newspaper was merely a supplemental reference. But listening to enemy radio was not about political news so much as entertainment. I remember that whenever the Australian national station broadcast a radio play of the Taiwanese film The Story of a Small Town everyone would bring their own radio because the shortwave signal would tend to drift and that way we could cover the entire frequency range and make sure we had continuous sound from at least one receiver at a time. The boys and girls sitting around that grass hut would be in tears! Especially when Teresa Teng's voice rang out, emotions would rise to a fever pitch – her voice was to die for.
The popularity of Teng's music among her listeners marked the birth of China's fan culture. Without the technology to communicate, fans organized their own groups of fandom by sharing her tapes or discussing her music together. Teng's music fandom is considered the earliest stage of the development of the Chinese pop culture fandom, before which no popular media could be found. In 1977, Teng's popular love song "The Moon Represents My Heart" was released; it became one of the first foreign songs to break into the country. Her songs over the following decade revolutionized Chinese popular culture, which marked the end of the extremely tight control exercised in the preceding three decades by the communist party over Chinese society and culture.
Author Ah Cheng cited Teng's songs as an inspiration for the revival of popular culture on the mainland. Wu'erkaixi, a Chinese political commentator of Uyghurs heritage, asserted that the youngsters who listened to her songs discovered the desire for the pursuit of freedom through her singing voice. He adds that "to the Chinese, Deng Lijun was a great person. If Deng Xiaoping brought economic freedom to China, she brought liberation of the body and free thinking to China."
According to Nobel Peace Prize laureate and writer Liu Xiaobo, "Teng's romantic songs reawakened our soft centers by dismantling the cast-iron frame work of our "revolutionary wills," melting our cold, unfeeling hearts, reviving sexual desires, and liberating our long-suppressed human softness and tenderness." Filmmaker Jia Zhangke said that Teng's songs were a big inspiration that drove his curiosity towards cinema. He relates: "Her songs represented a massive transformation in the cultural landscape of China at that time. Prior to the 1980s, China had no popular culture to speak of. The closest thing we had was revolutionary model operas and things made in that mold. Everything around us was structured collectively: we, but Teng's songs, on the other hand, were entirely new at the time.. they evoked individual desire: me, changing everything." Regarding her contribution to the development of the music industry in China, Wang Xiaofeng at Sanlian Lifeweek wrote, "Teng not only pioneered the development of popular music but also stimulated the rapid development of audio-video companies at that time." He stated that listening to tapes was one of the main cultural activities and that they were luxury goods, but this did not stop ordinary people from consuming them. In 1979, there were only a few audio-video distribution companies in the Mainland. By 1982, it had increased to 300, indicating Teng's music as the trailblazer for this change.
In 1974, Teng entered the Japanese market, two years after Japan severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan. She was extremely popular in Japan throughout the 1970s and 1980s, having lived off her royalties in the country after semi-retiring in the late '80s. During this tenure, Teng recorded and performed Japanese pop songs, often termed as kayokyoku by Japanese media, and helped connect Japan to much of East Asia, particularly Taiwan, China, and some of Southeast Asia, helping bridge the gap between them, some of which were later covered in Mandarin, as reported by Nippon.
Hirano Kumiko, an author at Nippon writes:
For Japanese, Teresa Teng was more than just a popular singer. By performing kayōkyoku, she connected Japan to its Asian neighbors. She taught us about the profundity of Chinese culture, whether in her birthplace of Taiwan, her ancestral home of China, or Hong Kong, which she loved throughout her life. We, her Japanese fans, will never forget her velvety voice and the brief, beautiful radiance of her life.
In 2007, Teng was inducted into the "Popular Music Hall of Fame" at the Koga Masao Museum of music in Tokyo, making Teng the only non-Japanese person to be inducted. In 2015, on an occasion to commemorate the 20th death anniversary of the singer, Akira Tada from Nikkei Asia wrote, "Asia has undergone significant changes in the past 20 years, with the flow of people, goods, and information having increased considerably. At the same time, new political frictions have developed. Teng, who continues to be loved across national and ethnic boundaries, still shines as a voice uniting Asia through song." In 2018, The Guardian wrote, "In 20th-century pop music, the voice of Elvis Presley is as iconic and identifiable in the west as that of Teresa Teng is in the east." According to Rolling Stone Philippines: "Teng's influence on Philippine music and pop culture has rekindled Filipinos' love for Mandopop across generations and communities throughout the Philippines." Andrew N. Weintraub and Bart Barendregt described her as "a model of inter-Asian modernity whose voice crossed linguistic, national and generational borders", whereas John F. Copper called her "the most heard singer in the world ever" during her time.
The 1996 Hong Kong film , directed by Peter Chan, features the tragedy and legacy of Teng in a subplot to the main story. The movie won Best Picture in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and at the Seattle International Film Festival in the United States. In 2007, TV Asahi produced a drama series entitled Teresa Teng Monogatari (テレサ・テン物語) to commemorate the 13th anniversary of her death. Actress Yoshino Kimura starred as Teng.
In 2002, Teng's commemorative statue was erected in Fushou Garden, Qingpu District, Shanghai. In 2010, a bronze statue was unveiled in Tuen Mun, Hong Kong, and another outside the Luzhou metro station in Taiwan on 25 June 2011. In 2015, a temple in Changhua County, Taiwan, erected a statue of the singer, honoring her as "Miaoyun Bodhisattva". That same year, the Daming County government in Handan City, Hebei province, China, built a "Lijun Town" dedicated to her. It renovated Teng's ancestral home to its original appearance. Her singing can be heard in every corner of the town. The city also features the "Teresa Teng Hanging Garden" and the "Teresa Teng Art Center", including a statue of the singer. Visitors can enjoy her music through artificial intelligence technology. On 8 November 2024, a monument dedicated to the singer was unveiled in Mishima, Fukushima, Japan to mark the 30th anniversary of Teng's death next year., Grand Paris, France]]On 29 January 2018, a Google Doodle was released across Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Bulgaria, and Iceland to honor Teng on what has been her 65th birthday. To date, Teng's stamps have been issued by countries across the world, including Papua New Guinea, Timor, Sierra Leone, Argentina, Liberia, Tuva Republic of Russia, Abkhazia, Grenada, Sakha Republic of Russia, Batum oblast, Japan, Guinea-Bissau, North Korea,Sources:
and Republic of Mali, in addition to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China.Sources:
In 1971, Teng met her first boyfriend, Lin Zhenfa (林振發), a Malaysian paper tycoon, and they soon fell in love. In 1978, he died of a heart attack. Later, Teng, accompanied by her close friends, went to the cemetery to pay respects to her boyfriend. In 1980, while in the US, Teng met Jackie Chan, who was filming in Hollywood. However, due to their personality differences, their relationship was short-lived and they parted ways.
In 1982, Teng was engaged to Beau Kuok, a Malaysian businessman and the son of multi-billionaire Robert Kuok. However, Beau's grandmother imposed several conditions on their union, including that Teng cease her career as an entertainer, as well as fully disclose her biography and all her past relationships in writing. However, Teng turned down the proposal, and the marriage was hence called off. In 1990, Teng met French photographer Paul Quilery in France, who was a friend of a guitarist in her band. They dated for five years and got engaged a month before Teng died on 8 May 1995.
Japanese albums
| I Want to Sing | 歌迷小姐 | Directed by Wang Yisheng, starring Teresa Teng and Zhang Chong. Selected as one of the "Top Ten Most Popular Movie Stars" in Hong Kong that year |
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Japan: " テレサ・テン データべース (Teresa Teng Database)" . Retrieved 14 December 2007.
Taiwan:
Hong Kong:
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