Teng Li-Chun (traditional Chinese: 鄧麗君; simplified Chinese: 邓丽君; pinyin: Dèng Lìjūn; 29 January 1953 – 8 May 1995), also known as Teresa Teng, was a Taiwanese singer, television personality, musician, and philanthropist. Widely regarded as one of the most culturally significant figures in the Chinese-speaking world of the 20th century, she is considered to be one of the most successful and influential Asian musicians of all time. Her contributions to Chinese pop has given 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 thirty years, Teng established herself as a dominant and influential force in Asia throughout most of her career, particularly in East and Southeast Asia. Teng is credited as the Far East's first pop superstar and a pioneer of modern Chinese pop music — a major force in the development of the Chinese music industry by incorporating western and eastern styles into her music, replacing the mostly revolutionary songs then prevalent in mainland China and laying the foundation for modern Chinese popular music.
Throughout her career, Teng recorded more than 1,700 songs in her native language, Mandarin, but also in Hokkien, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Japanese, Indonesian, English and Italian. 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 Koga Masao Museum of Music in Tokyo in 2007, making her the only non-Japanese person to be inducted.
Teng was born Teng Li-yun to waishengren parents in Baozhong, Yunlin County in Taiwan on 29 January 1953. Her father was a soldier in the Republic of China Armed Forces from Daming, Hebei, and her mother was from Dongping County, Shandong, who fled to Taiwan after communists took over mainland China in 1949.
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. 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.
Early beginnings and rise to fame
Teng's professional career commenced in 1967 with her role as host of the television program One Star a Day. The show, which aired for 20 minutes, was broadcast from Tuesday to Sunday. She then appeared in television dramas and movies, including a leading role in the 1967 film Thank You, Manager. At the age of 14, Teng withdrew from school to focus on music. She signed with a local company, Yeu Jow Records, and began to release a series of long-playing albums of "a go-go" dance tunes and cover versions of Western pop songs as well as local Taiwanese, Chinese, and Southeast Asian folk tunes. However, due to the lack of extra copyright royalties to increase her income, Teng committed to singing in nightclubs around Taiwan. She debuted at Paris Night, an upscale Taipei nightclub, and set a record for performing onstage there for 70 consecutive days, giving a 90-minute performance every single day.
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.
For most of the previous three decades, China was both economically and culturally closed to the rest of the world. Around 1974, Teng's songs began to trickle into China with the availability of radios. In 1977, her song "The Moon Represents My Heart" became one of the earliest foreign songs to arrive in the mainland. In 1978, with economic reform and the opening of borders, cassette recorders and pirated recordings of Teng's songs began to flow from coastal cities to the rest of the country. Her popularity soon skyrocketed. In Taiwan, Teng's songs became a propaganda tool for the KMT's psychological war against the Chinese Communist Party. Her songs were blasted from the sea-facing speakers from Kinmen Island to the residents of mainland China. This propaganda practice continued throughout the 1980s.