Teresa Teng

Teng Li-chun (; 29 January 1953 – 8 May 1995), commonly known as Teresa Teng, was a Taiwanese singer, actress, musician and philanthropist. Referred to by some as the "Eternal Queen of Asian Pop", she is considered one of the most successful and influential Asian popular singers of all time. Teng is recognized as a cultural icon for her contributions to Chinese pop, giving birth to the phrase, "Wherever there are Chinese-speaking people, there is the music of Teresa Teng." A polyglot, her crystalline voice and emotionally resonant songs, have transcended geographical, linguistic, and political boundaries, captivating audiences across Asia for several decades.

With a career spanning almost 30 years, Teng established herself as a dominant and influential force in Asia throughout most of her career, including East Asia, Southeast Asia, and, to some extent, South Asia. Teng is credited as the Far East's first pop superstar and by some as the 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 most revolutionary songs then prevalent in mainland China and laying the foundation for modern Chinese popular music. Teng was also instrumental in bridging the cultural gap across Chinese-speaking regions and was one of the first artists to connect Japan to some of East and Southeast Asia by singing Japanese pop songs, according to Nippon. In Taiwan, she was famous for entertaining the armed forces and singing patriotic songs that appealed to civilians on the island. Teng was nicknamed "the patriotic entertainer" and "the soldiers' sweetheart."

Teng recorded more than 1,700 songs throughout her career, starting at age 14, not only in Mandarin, but also in Hokkien, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Japanese, Indonesian, English, and Italian. To date, Teng's songs have been covered by hundreds of artists worldwide.

According to IFPI statistics, Teng has sold over 48 million albums, excluding sales in mainland China. In 1986, ''Time'' named her one of the seven greatest female singers in the world. In 2009, in a poll by a Chinese government web portal to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, Teng was selected as the "most influential cultural figure in China since 1949" by 8.5 million netizens. On the eve of the "March 8th International Women's Day" in 2010, she was named "the most influential woman in modern China" in a poll conducted by many well-known Chinese media. In 2022, Teng received a street name in Ivry-sur-Seine, Grand Paris, from the Municipal council of France. She was inducted into the "Popular Music Hall of Fame" at the Koga Masao Music Museum in Japan in 2007, making Teng the only non-Japanese national to do so. Provided by Wikipedia