Teresa Teng

Teresa Teng playing drums in Hong Kong (August 1970)

In 1975, Teng collaborated with Polygram Records of Hong Kong. Her album Island Love Songs: Goodbye My Love (1975) won her the Ten-Star Prize and the opportunity to feature in a movie musical of her own. The album was awarded platinum at Hong Kong's first Golden Album Awards. In 1976, Teng held her first Hong Kong concert at Lee Theatre, which was a tremendous success. She continued performing in concerts for the next 5 years attracting big crowds throughout this time. In 1978, her two album Teresa Teng's Greatest Hits and Love Songs of the Island 3 won her second Golden Album Award. She released her first Cantonese album Antagonist in 1980 which became the best-seller of the year; it's single Forget Him became one of the most famous Cantonese pop songs at that time.[36] The album received platinum at Golden Album Awards. In 1982, her dual-album of Teresa Teng's Concert Live became another platinum after hitting the market. She became household name in Hong Kong and held a concert at Queen Elizabeth Stadium the same year. Her second album The Long Journey of Life, released in 1983 achieved even bigger success than her predecessor. It became her fifth consecutive album to be awarded platinum, a record-breaking win against all singers in Hong Kong and held a concert tour in Hong Kong Coliseum in 1983. Her monumental concert rightly named A Billion Applause concert, was performed in both Taiwan and Hong Kong in 1984, in honor of her 15th year as a performer. One year later, she was awarded a special medal by PolyGram Hong Kong, as a tribute to her success of having sold more than 5 million copies in Hong Kong.[36]

Teng in the United States, after temporarily being banned from Japan due to passport controversy (1979)

Teng entered the Japanese market in 1973. On March 1, 1974, Teng released her first Japanese single 'No Matter Tonight or Tomorrow,' which marked the beginning of her career in Japan. The single initially received a lukewarm market response and was ranked 75th on the Oricon Chart with sales of approximately 30,000. The Watanabe firm considered giving up using her name.[36] However, considering her success in Asia, the record company decided to release two or three consecutive singles to test the market further. On July 1, 1974, Teng’s second single Airport was released. The sales of 'Airport' were huge, totaling 700,000 copies. Teresa then released a number of successful singles including The Night Ferry and Goodbye, My Love both of which she also covered in Mandarin. In 1979, she was caught with a fake Indonesian passport while entering Japan and was deported and banned from entering the country for one year.[36]^{: 204–214}

After a long absence, Teresa returned to the Japanese market on September 21, 1983, and released her first single "Tsugunai" (Atonement) after her comeback on 21 January 1984.[36] The single didn't receive good response initially; however, after a month, sales started to pick up, and seven months later, 'Atonement' eventually ranked 8th on the Oricon Chart and 1st on 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.[36] The success broke all the sales records of her previous period (1974–1979). On February 21, 1985, her 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 fourteen consecutive weeks and sales broke the 1.5 million mark. With "Aijin" Teresa won the 'Singer of the year' for the second time. Moreover, she was invited to perform in Kouhaku Uta Gassen, which represented the highest honor in the Japanese music world. Her next single Toki no Nagare ni Mi o Makase was released on 21 February 1986.[36] The single topped both the Oricon and Japan Cable Broadcasting Chart and sales of the single reached 2.5 million in Asian market becoming one of the most popular singles in Japan that year. She won the Japan Cable Award for the third time in a row. Teng was invited to perform in Kouhaku Uta Gassen for the second time. She became the first-ever artist to achieve three consecutive wins of this "Grand Prix", also known as Japan Cable Award. Teng also remains the only foreign singer to win this award for three consecutive years in the history of Japanese music (1984–1986).[36]^{: 216–218} Teng gave her last solo concert at the NHK Hall in Tokyo in 1985 before semi-retiring from entertainment circle.[49]

Teresa Teng in Los Angeles (1980)

Widely accepted as Asia's singing queen,[67] Teng enjoyed the repertoire of one of the biggest singers in the world in her heyday of the 1970s and 1980s.[68] She is credited by some as being an enlightener and a pioneer of Chinese vocal performance art and modern popular music.[11][4] Her profound influence on Asian popular music and the Chinese cultural sphere during the last second half of the 20th century led her to be recognized as Asia's first pop superstar[9] whose music swept across all of Asia, having a lasting effect on the Asian diaspora and beyond.[40][69]

Teresa Teng bronze statue near Luzhou station, Taipei, Taiwan

Until the late 1970s, for three decades, foreign music and art were not allowed into mainland China, and love songs were virtually unknown, with the exception of only political and red songs, which heavily dominated the cultural sphere of mainland China. Music critic Jin Zhaojun described the music during this period as “overly masculine and lacking in femininity”.[70] Teng's work on different styles of music, which blends Chinese elements with western-style pop and jazzy tunes, offered an alternative to the-then prevalent Chinese songs, which depended heavily on older instruments used in Chinese music. This inspired the musical creations of later generations.[4][71] Musicians rushed to learning the new form of music that entered the mainland through foreign cassettes and tape recorders. Teng had a dominant and decentralizing effect in this context. The music styles Teng brought to the mainland had a huge influence on many Chinese singers and musicians, both initially and after. She became the earliest guide for composers on how to arrange music for popular songs. Jin explains: “Many composers learned popular music arrangements from what they heard in her songs. As Chinese and western elements were well mixed together, it easily resonated with the republic youth. Many of them reproduce their work imitating her." Teng’s songs were focused on a wide range of issues, most primarily love and human relations—the most lacking elements in mainland culture at the time.[70][4] By the early 1970s, as rates of radio ownership began to increase, especially of cheap and portable transistor models, listening to Teng's music became the primary attraction. A man in Beijing on the interview with Andrew F. Jones, Professor of Chinese at the University of California, Berkeley 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.[72]

Chinese writer Ah Cheng 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 listen 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.[72]

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. Teng's songs over the following decade revolutionized Chinese popular culture that marked the end of extremely tight control exercised in preceding 3 decades by communist party over Chinese society and culture.[73][70]

Teng watching a football game in United States

Teng's music and her appearance shaped both the musical and non-musical aspects of Chinese society. She was pivotal in connecting her listeners, subjected to the extreme materialistic and repressive system during the aftermath of the cultural revolution, to an era of modernity and openness. Furthermore, she emerged as a cross-cultural ambassador, connecting Taiwan to its mainland, stimulating cultural exchanges across the two sides of the strait. In addition, she was integral to the foundation of China’s own popular music, replacing the most political songs and opening up a new musical circuit. She also had a considerable influence on fashion, leading the trend among women with the style that was typical of the 1970s, through the 1980s multiculturalism.[4][74][75]

A democracy activist, Wu'erkaixi, who is now living under political refuge in Taiwan, indicated that the youngsters who listened to her songs discovered the desire for the pursuit of freedom through her singing voice. Therefore, when Deng Lijun was gone, it wasn't just the loss of a singer but also the end of an era for better living space and political freedom brought by her.[74] He further adds: "To the Chinese, Deng Lijun was a great person. If Deng Xiao-ping brought economic freedom to China, she brought liberation of the body and free thinking to China. We now see the rise of China. However, Chinese don't enjoy more freedom but it is now clear and understandable that the liberation of body and spirit is more important than economic freedom".[74]

A literary critic Cai Xiang, in an essay on the Chinese 1970s, states: "Against the prohibitions of an "overly rigid, even prohibitive" system, Teng's music provided a "transgressive thrill" by opening a window to a curious new world beyond socialist normativity. All it took was one Teresa Teng to bring 'The East Is Red' to an end".[72] Music critic Jin Zhaojun said: "Teng not only pioneered the development of popular music, but also stimulated the development of the audio-visual economy at that time. Listening to tapes was one of the main cultural consumptions content. They were luxury goods, but this did not stop ordinary people from consuming it. In 1979, there were only a few audio-visual distribution companies in the Mainland. By 1982, it increased to 300. Deng Lijun's music was revolutionary to this change".[76] Li Dun, Chairman of the Beijing Oriental Songlei Musical Company recall the influence of Teng’s music on him: “I was sensible, I felt that China was a cold place and human emotions could not be expressed freely. It was not until Teng’s singing became widely popular in mainland that people came to know that there was another way of expressing emotions. She is my mentor”.[77]

Miss Teng performing at concert in Lincoln Center, NY (1980)

Teng enjoyed overwhelming popularity in Japan and Southeast Asia throughout most of her career, and to some extent South Asia during the early and mid '80s,[3] achieving a "cult status" in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, and Japan, where she became a "barometer of cross-strait relations," in rising geopolitical tensions at the time,[78] and one of the first artists to break through language barrier and gain acceptance and accolades among various cultures. This paved the way for other Asian musicians and opened the door for artists in Asia to international success that were previously confined to national boundary.[79][64] Her songs have been covered by several hundreds of singers all over the world; among them few notable ones are Faye Wong, Andy Lau, Leslie Cheung, Jon Bon Jovi, Siti Nurhaliza, Shila Amzah, Katherine Jenkins, Im Yoon-ah, David Archuleta, Agnez Mo, Korean girl group f(x) (group), English vocal group Libera (choir), Jewish singer Noa (singer), Grammy award-winning American musician Kenny G, Kiwi pianist Carl Doy, Cuba's leading a cappella musical band Vocal Sampling, and among others. Her songs are also featured in various International films, such as Rush Hour 2, The Game, Prison On Fire, Year of the Dragon, Formosa Betrayed, Gomorrah, and Crazy Rich Asians. In 1980, Teng became the first singer of Chinese descent to perform at the Lincoln Centre in New York City and the Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in 1983—two of the reputed venues in US.[39]

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[13] and Billboard.[20]

Hirano Kumiko, an author at Nippon writes:[13]

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, she was inducted in "Popular Music Hall of Fame" at Koga Masao Music Museum in Japan, making her the only non-Japanese national to do so.[19]

In 1995, American Billboard called her "Asian pop's favorite star".[20] Minoru Funaki, the former chairman of a Japanese record label, has referred to Teng as "the last great superstar of the twentieth century."[80] In 2018, The Guardian article quoted her, stating her influence in Asia was like that of Elvis in the west in 20th-century pop music.[81] Andrew N. Weintraub and Bart Barendregt described her as "a model of inter-Asian modernity whose voice crossed linguistic, national and generational borders."[79]

Teresa at Wong Chuk Hang, British Hong Kong (1970)

Considered a "brilliant linguist" by The New York Times,[16] Teng was named one of the world's seven greatest female singers by Time Magazine in 1986.[22] In a national survey by NHK in 1997, her song Toki no Nagare ni Mi o Makase was voted sixteenth among the 100 greatest Japanese songs of all time[82] and The Moon Represents My Heart stood first in the 10 best Chinese songs of all time in a poll by Radio Hong Kong in 1999.[83] In 2009, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, a government web portal conducted an online poll to choose "The Most Influential Cultural figure in China since 1949". Over 24 million people voted and Teng came out as a winner with 8.5 million votes.[1] On the eve of the "March 8th International Women's Day" in 2010, she was named "the most influential woman in modern China" by many well-known Chinese media.[23] The same year, CNN listed her in the 20 most influential music artists of the past 50 years.[1]

The 1996 Hong Kong film Comrades: Almost a Love Story, 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 Film Festival in the United States.[84] 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.[85]

In 2003, Teng's burial mound and commemorative statue was erected in Fushou Garden, Qingpu District, Shanghai.[86]

In 2011, her song The Moon Represents My Heart was chosen by Republic of China to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding.[87]

In 2015, 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. Teng’s singing can be heard in every corner of the town.[88] The city also features "Teresa Teng Hanging Garden" and "Teresa Teng Art Center" including a statue of the singer. Visitors can enjoy her music through artificial intelligence technology.[89]

In 2013, a 3D virtual hologram was created where Chou sang three songs with Teng. She also appeared on a Japanese TV show with 3D VR technology in 2017.[90]

On 29 January 2018, a Google Doodle was released across Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, Bulgaria, Canada and Iceland to honor the singer's 65th birth anniversary.[91][92]

To date, Teng's stamps have been issued in several countries across the world, including Papua New Guinea,[93] Timor, Argentina, Tuva Republic, Abkhazia, Grenada, Russian Republic,[94] Japan,[95] Guinea-Bissau,[96] North Korea, and Republic of Mali, in addition to Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China.[97]