Mainland madness
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).