The Cultural Phenomenon of Teresa Teng

Eighteen years have now gone by since Teresa Teng died of a respiratory attack in ­Chiang Mai, Thailand, on May 8, 1995. How quickly the time has passed!

Though she is no longer with us, her voice and her songs have a permanent place in the collective memory of Chinese people around the globe. You merely have to hear a phrase from any of those familiar and intoxicating melodies and your thoughts will immediately be drawn back to her heyday in the 1970s and 1980s.

Going to Japan to develop her career, Teng broke through the language barrier and became an Asia-wide star. In 1974, she won the “Best Newcomer Award” with her song “Kuuko” (“Airport”). The group photo below shows Teng, lower right, with other top newcomers that year. Starting in 1984 she won three straight Grand Prix awards in the “Nihon Yusen Taisho” (Japan Cable Radio Awards), a record no one has matched to this day.

Teresa Teng (Deng Lijun, or Teng Li-chun) was born in 1953 in Yun­lin County, Taiwan, the daughter of a career military officer. When Teng was six, her father retired from the military and came to northern Taiwan to go into business with some friends, at which point the whole family moved into a military dependents’ community in Lu­zhou, in what was then Tai­pei County. Even as a small child she was often brought to military functions by her fathers’ comrades to perform.

Her singing talent emerged very early, and she was considered a prodigy. In primary school, she often rose at 5 a.m., groping in the dark, and was brought by her father on a bicycle to the riverside to do voice exercises. After she returned home her family would feed her a raw egg to protect her throat, helping her develop her seemingly effortless legato style, gliding smoothly and gracefully from note to note.

At age 11 she won a radio singing contest broadcast on the Chung Hua Broadcasting Service with the song “Fang Ying Tai,” despite being the youngest contestant. At 14 she left the Gin­ling Girls High School, began studying with the composer Zuo Hong­yuan, and made her first vinyl recording Feng Yang Hua Gu. In 1969, then aged 16, she sang the theme song for Taiwan’s first ever television drama serial, Jing Jing, carrying her voice and name into every home in the land.

She began concert tours to Hong Kong and Southeast Asia in the 1970s, taking Chinese communities across Asia by storm and turning her into an international celebrity. Someone from Japan’s Polygram Records saw her concert in Hong Kong, and the company was so impressed they went to great lengths to induce her to go to Japan and further develop her career.

Going to Japan to develop her career, Teng broke through the language barrier and became an Asia-wide star. In 1974, she won the “Best Newcomer Award” with her song “Kuuko” (“Airport”). The group photo below shows Teng, lower right, with other top newcomers that year. Starting in 1984 she won three straight Grand Prix awards in the “Nihon Yusen Taisho” (Japan Cable Radio Awards), a record no one has matched to this day.

She formally entered the Japanese pop music scene in 1974, but her first Japanese single, an upbeat teeny-bopper tune, didn’t really fit Teng, who was already a mature 21 years of age. The unsuitability of the material, plus the fact that she was both a foreigner and a newcomer, added up to less than stellar results.

Having failed in her first attempt, Teng identified the problems as inadequately good pronunciation of Japanese, and lack of distinctiveness in her voice. She therefore set to work on her pronunciation and also altered her vocal style. Her second single, released three months later, reached the Top 15 within a month and sold over 750,000 copies, and she was named “Best Newcomer.”

Japanese fans admired the sense of classical elegance and femininity embodied in Teng—and not just in her voice. For one television appearance in 1976 she wore a traditional Chinese qipao with a long slit up the leg which highlighted her stunning figure and beautiful legs, dazzling the Japanese audience. She received countless adulatory letters and requests for photographs, while the Japanese media went all googly-eyed over her “gorgeous leg line.”

In 1979, there was some controversy when Teng entered Japan on an Indonesian passport. Because Taiwan and Japan no longer had formal diplomatic ties, a Taiwanese who wanted to go to Japan had to first apply for a special document from the Japanese government. Because Teng traveled frequently, it was more convenient for her to use the official passport that had been given to her by the Indonesian government. Unfortunately, she was suspected of using a “fake passport.” Although she was eventually exonerated by the Japanese authorities, they still prohibited her from entering the country for one year, temporarily derailing her career in Japan.

She nonetheless made a triumphant return to the Japanese pop scene in 1984 with a silky, flawless interpretation of the melodically lovely “Tsugunai,” selling 1.5 million copies. That year, then in 1985 for “Ai­jin” and again in 1986 for “Toki no Na­gare ni Mi o Ma­kase,” she won three consecutive “Grand Prix” awards for best hit song at the Ni­hon Yu­sen Tai­sho (Japan Cable Radio Awards), an achievement that not even a Japanese singer has ever matched.

The numbers tell the story of how high her star rose in the Land of the Rising Sun. Her Japanese record company estimates that a total of 120 singles, albums, and retrospective collections of Teresa Teng’s have been released there, and total sales up until the time of her death reached 22 million units, earning roughly US$100 million for the company.

One of her Japanese songs was rewritten with Chinese lyrics as “Wo Zhi ­Zaihu Ni.” This became Teng’s personal favorite, was a huge hit in Taiwan, and remains a perennial favorite.

Teng moved to Paris in 1990. This rare photo was taken during a visit from film star Lin Ching-hsia.

Teng never even got a high-school diploma, but as a result of her acute ear, a natural gift for languages, and arduous self-study, she eventually became conversant in Japanese, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Indonesian, English, and French, using them to interpret over a thousand songs.

In the 1980s she lived mainly in Hong Kong. She eventually became the most successful singer from Taiwan in the Canto-Pop scene, and was the first singer in the history of Hong Kong to hold concerts in all three of the city’s major venues.

“She was good-looking and sang delightfully. She was graceful and elegant, and very intelligent. She could speak many languages, and whatever language she was asked a question in, she would respond in that language,” says Zhang Wu­chang, a Hong Kong economist. He recalls that when he saw Teresa Teng perform in Hong Kong in 1984, she was already more than a pop singer—she was a cultural phenomenon. She behaved as an artist, not a commercial star trying to maximize her earnings. Other singers would put on a dozen shows in a row without hesitation, but she would do just one, despite the fact that after having invested in props and rehearsal, a second show would have meant pure profit in the millions of Hong Kong dollars. She also rarely endorsed products or did commercials.

The 1980s, when Teng’s fame was spreading overseas,

was also the decade in which mainland China began its policy of “reform and opening.” Her songs quickly swept through the mainland, serving as a kind of genteel “audio revolution” providing solace to a country that had only recently emerged from the throes of the Cultural Revolution.

Cassette tapes were carried into mainland China and then copied endlessly. At that time the average monthly income in the mainland was RMB40, but people would still spend one-fourth of that to buy a pirated Teresa Teng cassette. Her emotive, delicate voice (once described as “seven parts sweetness, three parts tears”), a perfect match for the themes of love, family, and home that typified her song selection, brought back to people in mainland China natural sentiments and attachments that leftists had tried to eradicate during successive political campaigns to remake the Chinese psyche.

The mainland authorities considered Teng’s music to be “decadent,” and she was officially banned. But she was never effectively shut out, and it was said that while “Old Deng” (Deng Xiao­ping) reigned during the day, “Young Deng” (Teresa Teng) reigned over the night.

Mainland Chinese music critic Jin Zao­jun states that no other singer has been able to affect so many Chinese. While her style was in the “petty bourgeois” tradition of feminine balladeers—light, genteel, sentimental—she managed this in a natural, flowing manner, without resorting to a cliché, syrupy plaintiveness. It is no wonder that virtually all of the pop singers that arose in mainland China starting in the 1980s—the mainland’s first post-1949 generation of pop artists—were influenced by Teng, and many simply copied her style outright.

Teng (left) grew up in a military family living in a military dependents’ community. Even as a small girl, she loved to sing, and also studied ballet (right). She began her professional singing career while still quite young (center).

Teresa Teng’s performance career was all smooth sailing, but her emotional world was less than perfect.

In 1981, with her career at its peak, she met Kuok ­Khoon Chen, scion of a wealthy Malaysian family, and they were engaged to be married. But the Kuok family asked Teng to cut all her ties with the entertainment world, and she ultimately decided to break off the relationship instead. Never having gotten married was one of her three greatest regrets in life.

Perhaps because she was tired of being endlessly commented on, or perhaps for health reasons, in the late 1980s she gradually withdrew from the stage and moved abroad.

“She was only 13 when she first appeared on TV, wearing a mini-skirt that showed off her beautiful legs, an entrancing smile on her lips, and a voice as sweet as her personality,” wrote reporter Zhou Fenna, who is the same age as Teng, in an article entitled “In Search of Teresa Teng.” Her peers in that era, when Taiwan was still relatively poor, did nothing but put their noses to the grindstone and prepare day after monotonous day for exams, and they envied her greatly.

But after her disappointing experiences with romance, people finally realized that she was a lot less happy than her glowing exterior suggested. Finally she settled in Paris, and found a French boyfriend more than a decade younger than herself. Then she died suddenly in Thailand, long before her time.

In 1981, Teng was master of ceremonies at the Golden Bell Awards. In the photo, she and then-GIO chief James Soong introduce John Ritter (right), star of the American TV show Three’s Company, which was a huge hit in Taiwan at that time. Throughout the event she showed great elegance and stage presence.

Teng’s death so far from home was more than just a personal tragedy.

Hong Kong director Peter Chan was halfway through a script for a new film when he heard the news about Teng’s death. In the film, the male and female leads (played by Leon Lai and Maggie Cheung, both themselves big Teresa Teng fans) meet, fall in love, and break up. Years later, they run into each other on the streets of New York and happen to see the story of Teng’s death being broadcast on a TV in a store window, whereupon they stop in their tracks, look at one another, and take stock of the choices they have made.

Chan made the film, Comrades: Almost a Love Story, shortly before Hong Kong’s return by Britain to mainland China, when Hong Kongers were feeling powerless and worried about the future. He wanted the movie to express the Chinese diaspora and incorporating Teresa Teng into the story evoked the special emotional link shared through her by people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China.

The film’s Chinese name, Tian Mi Mi, was based on a song of the same name. (The tune’s name has been translated into English as “Sweet Smile.”) The melody came from an Indonesian folk song that Teresa Teng had heard while touring in Southeast Asia, and she asked ­Zhuang Nu to write lyrics for it. Teng recorded both Mandarin and Cantonese versions.

Later Sweden’s Sofia Kallgren sang an English version called “Cherie Sweet Honey,” Korean singer Du Li An offered up a Korean-language interpretation, and Singapore’s Jessica Jay reworked it into yet another English song, “Time Is All We Need.” This shows the extent to which Teng’s work transcended time and space, and crossed cultural boundaries.

During the Cold War, Teresa Teng was depicted as a key figure in breaking through the “bamboo curtain,” and she often visited troops in the most dangerous locations. Above she is shown in flight uniform posing for a commemorative photo with aircrew. She was nicknamed “the soldiers’ sweetheart.”

In 2012, Jang Yu-shia, a blind singer from Taiwan, stunned the audience on a music competition program on mainland Chinese TV with a performance of “Du Shang Xi Lou” that was movingly similar to Teresa Teng’s, and it inspired a revival of interest in Teng’s original version.

Teng had recorded the song on her 1983 album Dan Dan You Qing. This was the first album ever in Chinese pop music history to use Song-Dynasty poetry for the lyrics. Leading composers from Taiwan and Hong Kong were invited to write music to go with 12 elegant classical poems, and the resulting album received better critical reviews than probably any other in Teng’s career. In particular, Teng’s vocal intro to “Du Shang Xi Lou,” evoking a dreamlike sense of space, set the new standard for “literary music.”

Teng (left) grew up in a military family living in a military dependents’ community. Even as a small girl, she loved to sing, and also studied ballet (right). She began her professional singing career while still quite young (center).

From her days as a child prodigy, to the glory of her professional career, to her moving away from home, everything Teng did was in the spotlight. But her death left many unanswered questions. As with Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe, the unexpectedness of her demise made it all the more poign­ant and hard to accept.

“Why did Teresa Teng end up in exile? It was perhaps her following the path to superstardom that left her so few choices in the end,” says author Ping Lu, who wrote a novel inspired by Teng’s story.

And yet she was far more than a simple pop artist. “In comparison to many artists like Fong Fei­fei, Jody ­Chiang (for Taiwanese), Anita Mui (for Hong Kongers), and more recently Sandy Lam and Chang Hui­mei, her artistry is relatively unappreciated. There are many aspects to Teresa Teng’s songs that deserve greater attention—such as the use of grace notes, or creative ideas she added herself—that have never been widely discussed.”

Ping Lu says that when Teng sang “Wo Zhi ­Zaihu Ni,” she captured the emptiness of a lost love, but also was rhetorically asking herself, “Will I meet someone else?” When with “­Chuan Liu Bu Xi” she reinterpreted the song “Kawa no Na­gare no Yō Ni,” originally sung by postwar Japanese cultural icon Hi­bari Mi­sora, which takes the flowing of a river as a metaphor for life, Teng’s voice was already revealing a different level of understanding of life. “You can hear in it the whole meaning of following a path through life, the struggle of constantly searching and never giving up.”

“Teng was determined never to pander or be vulgar, as shown in such things as transitioning from a cute childish voice to a mature style, or her search for herself over time,” says Ping Lu. “Saying goodbye to her former self, without looking back, she climbed to an artistic peak that no one else anticipated.” When we hear her familiar songs being broadcast, we should lend an ear to them to find the clues she has left us, or we will never understand her life as she really experienced it.

As far as Taiwanese are concerned, Teresa Teng was far more than merely—as she was once nicknamed—“the soldiers’ sweetheart.” For mainland Chinese, listening to her songs back in those days was stimulating, seductive, attractive. For fans around the world, Teresa Teng is a sentimental memory, an icon for her era, and a legend that will never die.

Going to Japan to develop her career, Teng broke through the language barrier and became an Asia-wide star. In 1974, she won the “Best Newcomer Award” with her song “Kuuko” (“Airport”). The group photo below shows Teng, lower right, with other top newcomers that year. Starting in 1984 she won three straight Grand Prix awards in the “Nihon Yusen Taisho” (Japan Cable Radio Awards), a record no one has matched to this day.

Teresa Teng’s voice was like a flower petal undulating in a gentle breeze. Hearing her songs again so many years after her death, we are also listening to our own sighs as we think about life.

Teng (left) grew up in a military family living in a military dependents’ community. Even as a small girl, she loved to sing, and also studied ballet (right). She began her professional singing career while still quite young (center).

Going to Japan to develop her career, Teng broke through the language barrier and became an Asia-wide star. In 1974, she won the “Best Newcomer Award” with her song “Kuuko” (“Airport”). The group photo below shows Teng, lower right, with other top newcomers that year. Starting in 1984 she won three straight Grand Prix awards in the “Nihon Yusen Taisho” (Japan Cable Radio Awards), a record no one has matched to this day.

Going to Japan to develop her career, Teng broke through the language barrier and became an Asia-wide star. In 1974, she won the “Best Newcomer Award” with her song “Kuuko” (“Airport”). The group photo below shows Teng, lower right, with other top newcomers that year. Starting in 1984 she won three straight Grand Prix awards in the “Nihon Yusen Taisho” (Japan Cable Radio Awards), a record no one has matched to this day.

Teresa Teng’s voice was like a flower petal undulating in a gentle breeze. Hearing her songs again so many years after her death, we are also listening to our own sighs as we think about life.

Going to Japan to develop her career, Teng broke through the language barrier and became an Asia-wide star. In 1974, she won the “Best Newcomer Award” with her song “Kuuko” (“Airport”). The group photo below shows Teng, lower right, with other top newcomers that year. Starting in 1984 she won three straight Grand Prix awards in the “Nihon Yusen Taisho” (Japan Cable Radio Awards), a record no one has matched to this day.

Teresa Teng passed away while still in the prime of life, but the impression she has left in the hearts of Chinese music fans will never fade.

Teresa Teng’s voice was like a flower petal undulating in a gentle breeze. Hearing her songs again so many years after her death, we are also listening to our own sighs as we think about life.

Teresa Teng’s voice was like a flower petal undulating in a gentle breeze. Hearing her songs again so many years after her death, we are also listening to our own sighs as we think about life.