Name	Cantonese
Nativename	广府话/廣府話 ''gwong2 fu2 waa2'' / ''gwong/ fu/ waa/'' 广州话/廣州話 ''gwong2 zau1 waa2'' / ''gwong/ zau waa/'' 白话/白話 ''baak6 waa2'' / ''baak_ waa/'' Known in Hong Kong and Macau as: 廣東話/广东话 ''gwong2 dung1 waa2'' / ''gwong/ dung waa/''
Familycolor	Sino-Tibetan
States	: central and western Guangdong (Zhongshan, Foshan, Shenzhen), the Pearl River Delta, Hainan, and the eastern and southern part of Guangxi (Wuzhou) : Sydney, Melbourne : Metro Vancouver, Metro Toronto, Greater Montreal : Vientiane : Kuala Lumpur, Perak, Sandakan, Ipoh : Bangkok : London : New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles : Ho Chi Minh City, Can Tho, Bac Lieu, Da Nang, Kien Giang, Quang Ninh
Fam2	Chinese
Fam3	Yue
Fam4	Yuehai
Script	Written Cantonese
Nation	(''de facto'' official spoken form of Chinese in government)
Agency	Official Language Division Civil Service Bureau Government of Hong Kong
Linglist	yue-can
Speakers	71 million }}

Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a language that originated in the vicinity of ''Canton'' (i.e. Guangzhou) in southern China, and is often regarded as the prestige dialect of Yue Chinese.

In mainland China, it is a lingua franca in Guangdong Province and some neighbouring areas, such as the eastern part of Guangxi Province. Outside mainland China, it is spoken by the majority population of Hong Kong and Macau in everyday life. It is also spoken by overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, the United States, Canada, Peru, Panama, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as in Europe, and being the most widely spoken Chinese dialect in many of these communities.

While the term "Cantonese" refers narrowly to the prestige dialect described in this article, it is often used in a broader sense for the entire Yue branch of Chinese, including related dialects such as Taishanese.

The Cantonese language is also viewed as part of the cultural identity for the native speakers across large swathes of southern China, Hong Kong and Macau. Although Cantonese shares much vocabulary with Mandarin Chinese, the two languages are not mutually intelligible largely because of pronunciation and gramatical differences. Sentence structure, in particular the placement of verb can sometime be different. The use of vocabulary in Cantonese also tend to have more historic roots.

Names

In English, the term "Cantonese" is ambiguous. Cantonese proper is the dialect native to the city of Canton, which is the traditional English name of Guangzhou, and later brought to Hong Kong and Macau; this narrow sense may be specified as "Canton dialect" or "Guangzhou dialect" in English.

However, "Cantonese" may also refer to the primary branch of Chinese which contains Cantonese proper as well as Taishanese and Gaoyang; this broader usage may be specified as "Yue" (粤). In this article, "Cantonese" is used for Cantonese proper.

Chinese speakers use some names that do not correspond exactly with the English terms. Customarily, speakers call their language "Guangzhou Prefecture speech" (Guǎngzhōu huà, 广州话 or 廣州話). In Guangdong province, people also call it "Provincial Capital speech". In Hong Kong and Macau, people usually call it "Guangdong speech" (廣東話). Outside of Guangzhou, people also call it "Baak Waa" (plain speech) (}}).

Due to its status as a prestige dialect, it is often called "Standard Cantonese" (; Guangdong Romanization：Biu1 zên2 yud6 yu5). (With simplified tone markers: biu zeon/ jyut_ jyu= / biu zên/ yud_ yu=).

Cultural role

Spoken Chinese has numerous regional and local varieties, many of which are mutually unintelligible. Most of these are rarely heard outside their native areas, although they may be spoken in homes outside of the country. Since the early 1900s (1909 Qing Dynasty decree), China has promoted Mandarin for use in education, the media and official communication, though a few state television and radio broadcasts are in Cantonese. However, due to the linguistic history of Hong Kong and Macau, and the use of Cantonese in many overseas Chinese communities, international usage of Cantonese has spread far out of proportion to its relatively small number of speakers in China, even though the majority of Cantonese speakers still live in mainland China.

Cantonese is the predominant Chinese language spoken in Hong Kong and Macau. In these areas, political discourse takes place almost exclusively in Cantonese, making it the only variety of Chinese other than Mandarin to be used as the primary language for the official state functions of an area. Because of their use by non-Mandarin-speaking Yue speakers overseas, the Cantonese and Taishanese languages are the primary forms of Chinese that Westerners come into contact with.

Along with Mandarin and Hokkien, Cantonese is one of the few varieties of Chinese with its own popular music, Cantopop. In Hong Kong, Cantonese lyrics predominate within popular music, and many artists from Beijing and Taiwan have learned Cantonese to make Cantonese versions of their recordings. Popular native Mandarin speaking singers, including Faye Wong, Eric Moo, and singers from Taiwan, have been trained in Cantonese to add "Hong Kong-ness" to their performances.

Phonology

The ''de facto'' standard pronunciation of the Cantonese language is that of Canton (Guangzhou), which is described at the Cantonese phonology article. Hong Kong Cantonese has some minor variations in phonology.

Hong Kong

The official languages of Hong Kong are English and Chinese, as defined in the Basic Law of Hong Kong. The Chinese language has many different varieties, of which Cantonese is one. In Hong Kong, Cantonese is the predominantly spoken variety in everyday life. It is the ''de facto'' official spoken form of the Chinese language used in the Government. It is also used as the medium of instruction in many schools, alongside English.

The Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong is mutually intelligible with the Cantonese spoken in the Chinese city of Canton (Guangzhou), although there exists some differences in pronunciation, accent and vocabulary. The Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong is known as Hong Kong Cantonese.

Written Cantonese

Cantonese has the most developed literature of any form of Chinese after Classical Chinese and Mandarin. It is used primarily in Hong Kong and in overseas Chinese communities, so it is usually written with traditional Chinese characters. Cantonese includes extra characters and characters with different meanings from Standard Written Chinese.

Romanization

Cantonese romanization systems are based on the accent of Canton and Hong Kong, and have helped define the concept of Standard Cantonese. The major systems are Barnett–Chao, Meyer–Wempe, the Chinese government's Guangdong Romanization, Yale and Jyutping. While they do not differ greatly, Yale is the one most commonly seen in the west today. The Hong Kong linguist Sidney Lau modified the Yale system for his popular Cantonese-as-a-second-language course and is still widely in use today.

Early Western effort

Systematic efforts to develop an alphabetic representation of Cantonese began with the arrival of Protestant missionaries in China early in the nineteenth century. Romanization was considered both a tool to help new missionaries learn the dialect more easily and a quick route for the unlettered to achieve gospel literacy. Earlier Catholic missionaries, mostly Portuguese, had developed romanization schemes for the pronunciation current in the court and capital city of China but made few efforts at romanizing other dialects.

Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary in China published a "Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect" (1828) with a rather unsystematic romanized pronunciation. Elijah Coleman Bridgman and Samuel Wells Williams in their "Chinese Chrestomathy in the Canton Dialect" (1841) were the progenitors of a long-lived lineage of related romanizations with minor variations embodied in the works of James Dyer Ball, Ernst Johann Eitel, and Immanuel Gottlieb Genăhr (1910). Bridgman and Williams based their system on the phonetic alphabet and diacritics proposed by Sir William Jones for South Asian languages. Their romanization system embodied the phonological system in a local dialect rhyme dictionary, the Fenyun cuoyao, which was widely used and easily available at the time and is still available today. Samuel Wells Willams' ''Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect'' (Yinghua fenyun cuoyao 1856), is an alphabetic rearrangement, translation and annotation of the Fenyun. In order to adapt the system to the needs of users at a time when there were only local variants and no standard—although the speech of the western suburbs, ''xiguan,'' of Guangzhou was the prestige variety at the time—Williams suggested that users learn and follow their teacher's pronunciation of his chart of Cantonese syllables. It was apparently Bridgman's innovation to mark the tones with an open circles (upper register tones) or an underlined open circle (lower register tones) at the four corners of the romanized word in analogy with the traditional Chinese system of marking the tone of a character with a circle (lower left for "even," upper left for "rising," upper right for "going," and lower right for "entering" tones). John Chalmers, in his "English and Cantonese pocket-dictionary" (1859) simplified the marking of tones using the acute accent to mark "rising" tones and the grave to mark "going" tones and no diacritic for "even" tones and marking upper register tones by italics (or underlining in handwritten work). "Entering" tones could be distinguished by their consonantal ending. Nicholas Belfeld Dennys used Chalmers romanization in his primer. This method of marking tones was adopted in the Yale romanization (with low register tones marked with an 'h'). A new romanization was developed in the first decade of the twentieth century which eliminated the diacritics on vowels by distinguishing vowel quality by spelling differences (e.g. a/aa, o/oh). Diacritics were used only for marking tones. The name of Tipson is associated with this new romanization which still embodied the phonology of the Fenyun to some extent. It is the system used in Meyer-Wempe and Cowles' dictionaries and O'Melia's textbook and many other works in the first half of the twentieth century. It was the standard romanization until the Yale system supplanted it. The distinguished linguist, Y. R. Chao developed a Cantonese adaptation of his Gwoyeu romanization system which he used in his "Cantonese Primer." The front matter to this book contains a review and comparison of a number of the systems mentioned in this paragraph. The GR system was not widely used.

Cantonese romanisation in Hong Kong

An influential work on Cantonese, ''A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced According to the Dialect of Canton,'' written by Wong Shik Ling, was published in 1941. He derived an IPA-based transcription system, the S. L. Wong system, used by many Chinese dictionaries later published in Hong Kong. Although Wong also derived a romanization scheme, also known as S. L. Wong system, it is not widely used as his transcription scheme.

The romanization advocated by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) is called Jyutping, which solves many of the inconsistencies and problems of the older, favored, and more familiar system of Yale Romanization, but departs considerably from it in a number of ways unfamiliar to Yale users. The phonetic values of letters are not quite familiar to those who have studied English. Some effort has been undertaken to promote Jyutping with some official support, but it is too early to tell how successful it is.

Another popular scheme is Cantonese Pinyin Schemes, which is the only romanization system accepted by Hong Kong Education and Manpower Bureau and Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority. Books and studies for teachers and students in primary and secondary schools usually use this scheme. But there are quite a lot teachers and students using the transcription system of S. L. Wong.

However, learners may feel frustrated that most native Cantonese speakers, no matter how educated they are, really are not familiar with any romanization system. Apparently, there is no motive for local people to learn any of these systems. The romanization systems are not included in the education system either in Hong Kong or in Guangdong province. In practice, Hong Kong people follow a loose unnamed romanisation scheme used by the Government of Hong Kong.

Cantonese outside China

Historically, the majority of the overseas Chinese have originated from just two provinces, Fujian and Guangdong. This has resulted in the overseas Chinese having a far higher proportion of Fujian and Guangdong languages/dialect speakers than Chinese speakers in China as a whole.

The largest number of Cantonese speakers outside mainland China and Hong Kong are in Canada and the United States; however, speakers of Min dialects predominate among the overseas Chinese in southeast Asia. The Cantonese spoken in Singapore and Malaysia are known to have borrowed substantially from Malay and other languages.

Canada

For many decades and today, Cantonese continues to be the most common Chinese language spoken among Chinese Canadians. According to Canada 2006 Census, there are 361,450 Canadian residents who reported Cantonese as their mother tongue including 166,655 in Greater Toronto Area and 125,940 in Greater Vancouver to lead the way. The total number of Cantonese speakers in Canada however is expected to be greater than those numbers provided by Statistics Canada considering that 456,705 people who reported a Chinese mother tongue either did not specifically specify which Chinese language they were referring to, or specified a languages outside of Cantonese, Mandarin, Chaochow, Fukien, Hakka, Shanghainese, or Taiwanese. Hence among the 456,705 residents, many of them are Cantonese speakers as well.

The majority of Cantonese speakers came from Hong Kong in bunches in the late 60s to mid 70s during and after the Hong Kong 1967 Leftist riots, and came in masses during the 80s to late 90s in response to the Transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong back to Mainland China in 1997. Immigrants from Guangdong, Vietnam and Southeast Asia also form an integral part of the Cantonese speaker demographics in Canada.

Malaysia

Cantonese is widely spoken in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, Petaling Jaya and Subang Jaya in Selangor, most districts in Perak, Sibu in Sarawak and Sandakan in Sabah. In general, Cantonese is widely spoken in all part of Malaysia, even though large part of Chinese population are non-Cantonese. Cantonese can be regarded as highly influential among Chinese Malaysians. Unlike Hokkien, with the largest population among Chinese Malaysian, the language has very minimal influence on other dialect groups. Viewers in Malaysia enjoyed the programmes in original soundtrack. Pay TV operator, Astro, on the other hand, do offer viewers a choice - in original soundtrack (Cantonese) and Mandarin (dubbed version) in its prime-time drama series. There are four Chinese radio stations - My FM, one FM, 988 and Ai FM. Of these four, three are private-owned, which broadcast mainly in Cantonese together with Mandarin. Ai FM, however, is a government owned station that broadcast solely in Mandarin. The only Cantonese programme used in Ai FM is the news broadcast.

New Zealand

The goldminers who came to New Zealand in the 1860s were mainly from the southern counties of Guangdong province. Through chain-migration between the 1860s to 1920s Cantonese became the dominant language spoken by New Zealand Chinese. Since the late 1980s there has been a large number of Mandarin-speaking Chinese coming to New Zealand either as permanent immigrants or temporary English-language students.

Singapore

In Singapore the government has a Speak Mandarin Campaign(SMC) which seeks to actively promote the use of Mandarin over other Chinese languages, such as Min-nan (colloquially known as Hokkien) (41.1%), Teochew (21.0%), Cantonese (15.4%), Hakka (7.9%) and Hainanese (6.7%).

{|class="wikitable" |-- |+ Population Profile of Singapore Chinese Language Groups |-- !Dialect Group !1990 !2000 |- |Hokkiens |align=right |42.1% |align=right |41.1% |- |Teochews |align=right |21.9% |align=right |21.0% |- |Cantonese |align=right |15.2% |align=right |15.4% |- |Hakkas |align=right |7.3% |align=right |7.9% |- |Hainanese |align=right |7.0% |align=right |6.7% |- |Foochows (Min Dong) |align=right |1.7% |align=right |1.9% |- |Henghua (Puxian/Putian) |align=right |0.9% |align=right |0.9% |- |Shanghainese |align=right |0.8% |align=right |0.9% |- |Hockchia (Fuqing) |align=right |0.6% |align=right |0.6% |- |Others |align=right |2.4% |align=right |3.7% |- |}

This was seen as a way of creating greater cohesion among the ethnic Chinese. In addition to positive promotion of Mandarin, the campaign also includes active attempts to dissuade people from using other Chinese languages.

Most notably,all non-Mandarin Chinese programmes on TV and radio were stopped after 1979. The prime minister then, also stopped giving speeches in Hokkien to prevent giving conflicting signals to the people.

Hong Kong (Cantonese) and Taiwanese drama series are not available in their original languages on TV although Japanese and Korean drama series are available in their original languages. Cantonese drama series on non-cable TV channels are dubbed in Mandarin and broadcast without the original Cantonese soundtrack. Supporters of non-Mandarin Chinese languages who feel that dubbing causes the series to lose its natural flavor often buy original DVDs and VCDs from Taiwan and Hong Kong to keep in touch with their mother tongues.

An offshoot of SMC is the Pinyinisation of certain terms which originated from southern Chinese languages. For instance, dim sum is often known as ''dianxin'' in Singapore's English language media, though this is largely a matter of style, and most Singaporeans will refer to dim sum when speaking English. However, Cantonese is still spoken in large proportion of Cantonese family compared to other dialect groups. The situation is very different in nearby Malaysia (especially in Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh), where even most non-Cantonese speaking Chinese can understand the language to a certain extent through exposure to the language.

Thailand

The Chinese (including who of mixed ancestry) are the largest group resides from Hong Kong or southern China constituting around 50% of Bangkok's total registered population, making it as the world's major city with the largest number of people with Chinese ancestry outside China. Nationally, Chinese make up 30% of Thailand's population and 20% out of it speaks Cantonese.

United Kingdom

The majority of Cantonese speakers in the UK have origins from the former British colony of Hong Kong and speak the Canton/Hong Kong dialect, although many are in fact from Hakka-speaking families and are bilingual in Hakka. There are also Cantonese speakers from south east Asian countries such as Malaysia and Singapore, as well as from Guangdong in China itself. Today an estimated 300,000 British people have Cantonese as a mother tongue, this represents 0.5% of the total UK population and 1% of the total overseas Cantonese speakers.

United States

For the last 150 years, Guangdong Province has been the place of origin of most Chinese emigrants to Western countries; one coastal county, Taishan (or Tóisàn, where the Sìyì or ''sei yap'' dialect of Yue is spoken), alone may have been the home to more than 60% of Chinese immigrants to the US before 1965. As a result, Yue dialects such as Siyi (the dialects of Taishan, Enping, Kaiping and Xinhui Districts) and Cantonese (with a heavy Hong Kong influence) have been the major Yue dialects spoken abroad, particularly in the United States.

The Zhongshan dialect of Cantonese, with origins in the Pearl River Delta, is spoken by many Chinese immigrants in Hawaii, and some in San Francisco and in the Sacramento River Delta (see Locke, California); it is a Yuehai dialect much like Guangzhou Cantonese, but has "flatter" tones. Yue is the third most widely spoken non-English language in the United States. Many institutes of higher education, such as Stanford, Duke, and Yale, have Cantonese programs. The currently most popular romanization for learning Cantonese in the United States is Yale Romanization.

This situation is now changing in the United States; recent Chinese emigrants originate from many different areas including mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Recent immigrants from mainland China and Taiwan in the U.S. all speak Standard Chinese (''putonghua/guoyu''), with varying degrees of fluency, and their native local language, such as Min (Hokkien and other Fujian languages), Wu, Mandarin, Cantonese etc. As a result, Mandarin is increasingly becoming more common as the Chinese lingua franca among overseas Chinese.

In some metropolitan areas with large Chinese populations, separate neighborhoods and enclaves segregated by the primary language or dialect spoken have begun to arise. For example, in New York City, Cantonese still predominates in the older historic Chinatown in Manhattan, while the newer Chinatowns in Queens and Brooklyn have large numbers of Mandarin and Fukienese speakers respectively.

Vietnam

In Vietnam, Cantonese is widely spoken amongst the ethnic-Chinese (Hoa) community, however many have been influenced by Vietnamese, hence speak it with a slight Vietnamese accent.

Loanwords

Life in Hong Kong is characterised by the blending of Asian (mainly south Chinese) and Western influences, as well as the status of the city as a major international business centre. Influences from this territory are widespread in foreign cultures. As a results, many loanwords are created and exported to China, Taiwan, and Singapore. Some of the loanwords are even more popular than their Chinese counterparts. At the same time, some new words created are vividly borrowed by other languages as well.

See also

Chinese language

Yue Chinese

Controversy over use of Cantonese by Guangzhou Television

Cantonese people

Footnotes

External links

Hong Kong Government site on the HK Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS)

cantoneseAID

Learn Cantonese (with Cantonese–English / English–Cantonese Dictionary)

USA Foreign Service Institute (FSI) Cantonese basic course

Category:Chinese dialects Category:Languages of Hong Kong

ca:Cantonès es:Cantonés estándar fr:Cantonais standard he:קנטונזית תקנית ml:കാന്റോനീസ് ഭാഷ nl:Standaardkantonees no:Standard kantonesisk pnb:کینٹونی pl:Standardowy język kantoński sco:Cantonese sr:Стандардни кантонски језик ta:கண்டோனீசு th:ภาษาจีนกวางตุ้งมาตรฐาน zh-yue:廣府話 zh:广州话

name	Teresa Teng
tradchinesename	鄧麗君
simpchinesename	邓丽君
pinyinchinesename	Dèng Lìjūn
wade-gileschinesename	Teng Li-chun
pojchinesename	Tēng Lê-kun
birth name	Teng Li-chun (鄧麗筠)
ancestry	Daming, Hebei, China
origin	Republic of China (Taiwan)
birth date	January 29, 1953
birth place	Baojhong, Yunlin, Taiwan
death date	May 08, 1995
death place	Chiang Mai, Thailand
restingplace	Chin Pao Shan (Jinbaoshan), Taiwan
restingplacecoordinates
othername	Teresa Tang, Teresa Deng
occupation	Singer
genre	Mandopop, Cantopop, J-Pop
instrument	Singing
label	Taiwan: Yeu Jow (1967–1971), Haishan (1971), Life (1972–1976), Kolin (1977–1983), PolyGram (1984–1992)Hong Kong: EMI (1971), Life (1971–1976), PolyGram (1975–1992)Japan: Polydor K.K. (1974–1981), Taurus (1983–1995)
yearsactive	1967–1995
associatedact	Debbie Gibson, Crystal Gayle, Hibari Misora, Tiffany, Charlene, Olivia Newton-John
goldenmelodyawards	Special Award1996
awards	}}

Teresa Teng (born January 29, 1953 – May 8, 1995) (|s=|p=Dèng Lìjūn|w=Teng Li-chun|poj=Tēng Lē-kun|first=t}}, Japanese: テレサ・テン), was an immensely popular and influential Chinese pop singer from Taiwan. Teresa Teng's voice and songs are instantly recognized throughout East Asia and in areas with large Asian populations. It is often said, "Wherever there are Chinese people, the songs of Teresa Teng can be heard." Her songs also enjoy popularity among Korean, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian and Indonesian listeners.

Teng was known for her folk songs and romantic ballads. Many became standards in her lifetime, such as "When Will You Return?" (何日君再來) and "The Moon Represents My Heart" (月亮代表我的心). She recorded songs not only in her native Mandarin but also in Taiwanese, Cantonese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, and English.

Teng, a lifelong sufferer from asthma, died in 1995 from a severe respiratory attack while on holiday in Thailand. She was 42.

Biography

Early life

Teresa Teng was born in Baozhong, Yunlin County, Taiwan, to a mainland Chinese family from Hebei. She was educated at Ginling Girls High School. As a young child, Teresa won awards for her singing at talent competitions. Her first major prize was in 1964 when she sang "Visiting Yingtai" from Shaw Brothers' Huangmei opera movie, "The Love Eterne" (梁山伯與祝英台), at an event hosted by Broadcasting Corporation of China. She was soon able to support her family with her singing. Taiwan's rising manufacturing economy in the 1960s made the purchase of records easier for more families. With her father's approval she quit high school to pursue singing professionally.

Career

Teng's singing style conveyed simplicity and sincerity. Yeh Yueh-Yu, a professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Southern California said, "It was the sweetness in her voice that made her famous. She had a perfect voice for folk songs and ballads, and she added traditional folk song stylings into Western-style compositions." Her voice was also described as being "like weeping and pleading, but with strength, capable of drawing in and hypnotizing listeners." Songwriter Tsuo Hung-yun said Teng's voice was "seven parts sweetness, three parts tears."

Teng gained her first taste of fame in 1968 when a performance on a popular Taiwanese music program led to a record contract. She released several albums within the next few years under the Life Records label. In 1973 she attempted to crack the Japanese market by signing with the Polydor Japan label and taking part in Japan's Kōhaku Uta Gassen, a year-round singing match of the most successful artists. She was named "Best New Singing Star". Following her success in Japan, Teresa sang many Japanese songs, including original hits such as which was later covered in Chinese as "I Only Care About You" (我只在乎你).

In 1974 the song "Airport" (空港) became a hit in Japan. Teng remained popular in Japan despite being barred from the country briefly in 1979 for having a fake Indonesian passport she purchased for US$20,000. The subterfuge had seemed necessary due to the official break in relations between Taiwan and Japan that occurred shortly after the People's Republic of China replaced the ROC in the United Nations.

Teng's popularity boomed worldwide in the 1970s after her debut in Japan. Singing by now in Cantonese, Japanese and English besides her native Mandarin, Teng's popularity quickly grew in Malaysia and Indonesia. In Taiwan she was known not only as the island's most popular export, but as "the soldier's sweetheart" because of her frequent performances for servicemen. Teng was herself the child of a military family. Her concerts for troops featured popular music and Taiwanese folk songs that appealed to natives of the island as well as Chinese folk songs that appealed to homesick refugees of the civil war.

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 several years in mainland China as too "bourgeois". Her popularity in China continued to grow nonetheless thanks to the black market. As Teng songs continued to be played everywhere, from nightclubs to government buildings, the ban on her music was soon lifted. Her Chinese fans nicknamed her "Little Deng" because she had the same family name as Deng Xiaoping; it was said that Deng the Communist leader ruled China by day, but that Deng the singer ruled China by night.

Teng's contract with Polydor ended in 1981. She signed a contract with Taurus Records in 1983 and made a successful comeback appearance in Japan. In 1984 Taurus released her most-acclaimed album, ''Light Exquisite Feeling'' (淡淡幽情). This album consisted of settings of twelve poems from the Tang and Song dynasties. The music, written by composers of her earlier hits, blended modern and traditional styles of East and West. The most popular single from the album today is "Wishing We Last Forever" (但願人長久). The number of hits released in the years from 1984–1989 make them "Teresa Teng's Golden Years" in the views of her fans. She was the first singer to win the All-Japan Record Awards for four consecutive years (1984–1988).

Teng performed in Paris during the 1989 Tiananmen student protests on behalf of the students and proclaimed her support for democracy. On May 27, 1989, over 300,000 people attended the concert called "Democratic songs dedicated to 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 during her career, her hopes of performing one day in mainland China never materialized. The Communist Party of China eventually invited her to do so in the 1990s but she died before the opportunity came.

Death and commemorations

Teng died from a severe asthma attack while on holiday in Chiang Mai, Thailand at the age of 42 (43 by Chinese reckoning) on May 8, 1995. She was an asthmatic throughout her adult life. Teng was given state honors at her funeral in Taiwan, with the flag of the Republic of China draped over her casket and then president Lee Teng-hui in attendance among thousands in mourning.

She was buried in a mountainside tomb at Chin Pao San, a cemetery in Jinshan, Taipei County (now New Taipei City) in northern Taiwan. The grave site features a statue of Teng and a large electronic piano keyboard set in the ground that can be played by visitors who step on the keys. The memorial is often visited by her fans. (This represents a noteworthy departure from the traditional Chinese practice of shunning grave sites.)

A house she bought in 1986 in Hong Kong at No. 18 Carmel Street has also become a site of pilgrimage for her fans soon after her death. Plans to sell the home to finance a museum in Shanghai were made known in 2002, and subsequently sold for HK$ 32 million. It closed on what would have been her 51st birthday on January 29, 2004.

To commemorate the 10th anniversary of her death, Teresa Teng Culture and Education Foundation launched a campaign entitled "Feel Teresa Teng". In addition to organizing an anniversary concert in Hong Kong and Taiwan, music fans paid homage at her shrine at Chin Pao San Cemetery. Additionally, some of her dresses, jewelry and personal items were placed on exhibition at Yuzi Paradise, an art park outside Guilin, China.

In May 2002, the wax figure of Teng was unveiled at Madame Tussauds Hong Kong.

Influence on popular culture

Her songs have been covered by a number of singers, including Faye Wong who released a tribute album (''Decadent Sounds of Faye'', 菲靡靡之音, 1995) of Teng's popular hits.

The 1996 Hong Kong film ''Comrades: Almost a Love Story'' (甜蜜蜜 – Tiánmìmì) directed by Peter Chan features the tragedy and legacy of Teresa 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.

Her songs are featured in various films, e.g. ''Rush Hour 2'', ''Prison On Fire'', ''Formosa Betrayed''.

In 2007, TV Asahi produced a tanpatsu (単発, TV movie), entitled ''Teresa Teng Monogatari'' (テレサ・テン物語) to commemorate the 13th anniversary of her death. Actress Yoshino Kimura starred as Teresa Teng. Teresa Teng, Judy Ongg (1950–), Agnes Chan (1955–), Ouyang Feifei (1949–) and Yu Yar (尤雅, 1953–) were billed as the "Five Great Asian Divas" during the 1970s and 1980s due to their huge cross-cultural popularity. The music of Teresa Teng remains the most popular.

Her song "Toki no Nagare ni Mi o Makase" was played numerous times in the film "Ban zhi yan" (also known as "Metade Fumaca" which means "half smoked" in Portuguese), including the opening scene. It can be called the theme of the film.

Awards received in Japan

Teresa Teng received the following awards in Japan:

The New Singer Award for「空港」(Kūkō) in 1974.

The Gold Award in 1986 for「時の流れに身をまかせ」(Toki no Nagare ni Mi o Makase).

The Grand Prix for「つぐない」(Tsugunai) in 1984:「愛人」(Aijin) in 1985; and「時の流れに身をまかせ」(Toki no Nagare ni Mi o Makase) in 1986. This was the first time anyone had won the Grand Prix three years in a row.

The Outstanding Star Award for「別れの予感」(Wakare no Yokan) in 1987.

The Cable Radio Music Award for「別れの予感」(Wakare no Yokan) in 1987 and 1988.

The Cable Radio Special Merit Award (有線功労賞) in 1995 for three consecutive Grand Prix wins.

References

External links

Teresa Teng Foundation 鄧麗君文教基金會

鄧麗君 Teresa Teng テレサ・テン – One And Only

Category:1953 births Category:1995 deaths Category:Cantopop singers Category:Deaths from asthma Category:Japanese-language singers Category:Taiwanese film actors Category:Taiwanese female singers Category:Taiwanese Mandopop singers Category:Taiwanese television actors Category:People from Yunlin County

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