Teresa Teng (1953-1995) Cultural Liberation Through Song
...continued from "Part 1: Early Life & Career: Teresa Teng (1953-1995) Cultural Liberation Through Song"
Teresa Teng’s success in Japan marked the turning point in her singing career, with her popularity spreading further across Asia to other countries in South East Asia, mainland China, Hong Kong, and even to the United States.
Nevertheless, it is in mainland China where her songs made the most significant influence in culture and history.
In 1978, the citizens of China were just coming out of the ‘Great Cultural Revolution’. During this period, Teresa faced heavy repressive policies from the Chinese government, and a country-wide ban of her songs.
Even though Teresa and her songs became politicized, she was an indirect, influential figure in society lending to the rise of pro-democracy movements in China.
The ‘Great Cultural Revolution’ in 1969 was a sociopolitical movement led by Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) leader, Mao Zedong, with an intent to preserve Chinese communism for the good of the nation.
For ten harsh years, China was closed to the world, and commercial popular culture in mainland China was virtually non-existent; in its place was a highly politicized revolutionary mass culture.
A type of music called ‘revolutionary songs’ or "Red Songs" dominated the airwaves in the daily lives of the people. These songs inhibited personal emotions such as love, romance, lament, loneliness and etc.
In the early reform, post-Mao, era in 1978, a new China was emerging under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping.
The citizens, with the horrors of the cultural revolution still fresh in mind, begin to receive their first exposure to Teresa’s songs as China slowly opened its doors to the world. It is during this time Teresa’s popularity soared in China.
Pirated copies of her albums sold in huge volumes with Chinese cities, even in Hong Kong, “broadcasting Teresa Teng loud and clear every evening in a bid to attract customers” (Shiau, 2009).
The majority of Teresa’s songs are love songs, and they are sharply different than the loud revolutionary battle songs heard daily by the people during the Cultural Revolution years.
For example, here is the English-translated lyrics to the Mandarin revolutionary song, “The East is Red” (东方红) that was the de facto anthem of the People’s Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s:
The east is red, the sun is rising,
From China comes Mao Zedong
He strives for the people’s happiness,
Hurrah, he is the people’s great savior!
(Smithsonian Music, 2019)
The revolutionary songs had the sole purpose of evoking revolutionary enthusiasm and patriotism. They mostly inhibit personal and private emotions such as feelings of romance or lament.
In contrast, Teresa’s song embodied waves of emotions true to the natural human being. The language is simple and natural, close to spoken language with soft and steady rhythms, and graceful melodies.
Here is an example of the English-translated lyrics of Teresa’s most famous Mandarin love song, “The Moon Represents my Heart” (月亮代表我的心 Yue Liang Dai Biao Wo De Xing):
You ask me how deeply I love you?
I love you very much.
My feeling is true,
my love is genuine,
and the moon represents my heart.
You ask me how deeply I love you
I love you very much.
My feeling won’t change,
my love stays the same,
and the moon represents my heart
(Tao, 2022)
The living environment of the Cultural Revolution strictly forbade and censored the subject of love in literary and artistic works.
It is no wonder Teresa’s songs soothed the souls of hundreds of millions of people in China, when it broke into the market, especially when her songs evoked nostalgia of a time of freedom to feel, express love, and the simple pleasures of daily life.
Moreover, it is for this reason, Teresa’s popular songs are indeed viewed as the “decadent voice of the bourgeoisie” from the perspective of a socialist revolutionary culture.
As described by author, Dongfeng Tao, there is a stark comparison in one’s musical experience between revolutionary songs and Teresa’s songs:
...Furthermore, revolutionary songs offered a different esthetic experience, as they glorified the collectivistic and heroic spirit, were filled with fighting passion, and followed a rigid and uniform style.
Revolutionary songs, at the same time, inhibited private emotions, suppressed individuality, and lacked a clear personal style.
In this regard, Teresa Teng’s songs revived the private and emotional worlds stymied by revolutionary mass culture, and thereby played a pivotal role in rebuilding an authentic public culture and public sphere in post-Mao China. (Tao, 2022)
An account from a writer named Shengqi Sun, as explained by Tao, reinforced the fact that revolutionary songs or ‘Red Songs’, “required shouting as to give a sonorous and powerful sound”, which was very different than the ‘decadent voice’ of Teresa Teng, soft and tender.
When Teresa’s music first sounded in Sun’s ear, his heart was suddenly intoxicated and remembers Teresa’s voice as “the sound of heaven.” Tao further describes features of Teresa Teng’s voice that ultimately won over the hearts of the citizens in China:
… several features of Teresa Teng’s voice such as the breathiness, the imperceptible intake, the sibilance and the vibrato...
Teng’s softness, tentativeness and the corporeal sensuality in sharp contrast with the monophonic collectiveness, insistent duple rhythms, unremitting intensity, and timbral stridency of those revolutionary songs. (Tao, 2022)
Listening Examples:
Here's a revolutionary song or "Red Song" titled "The East is Red"
Now, compare it to one of Teresa Teng's love songs.
Teresa's songs were harshly criticized as ‘Yellow Songs’ to suggest that they are “pornographic”, as opposed to revolutionary, ‘Red Songs’ which are patriotic and nationalistic.
While Teresa’s style, image and representation in music was considered representative of “western decadence, and specifically as being too bourgeois” (Shiau, 2009), her music truly brought a cultural liberation to people after the decade-long cultural barrenness of the Cultural Revolution.
It can also be considered a possible catalyst for democratic imagination, triggering a reverence within the general public for Western democratic politics and a desire for freedom which finally culminated in the pro-democracy movement in 1989.
Authorities in China started to realize and react to the sudden shock of this new culture being introduced to the people.
In response to fears that Western liberal ideas were spreading among the Chinese population, Teresa’s songs were banned as the authorities waged a campaign to eliminate ‘spiritual pollution’ during the early 1980s.
Her music was said to be full of counter-revolutionary features and was thus a poisonous weed that corroded the mind, dampened the public life spirit, and finally harmed Chinese people’s minds.
In April 1980, participants of the 4th national Music Creation Conference, led by the Chinese Musicians Association, a leading organization in China’s musical realm at the time, criticized pop songs, and mainly those of Teresa Teng’s, of which could “contaminate the revolutionary soldiers with bourgeois ideas and damage their fighting spirit” (Tao, 2022).
Authorities went to great efforts in banning the import of audio cassettes, video tapes, and music venues, but the people continued to find a way to use portable radios as a private device to bypass governmental surveillance and listen to Teresa secretly at home.
Across the straits during the Cold War, Teresa’s songs were used as propaganda in the political tensions between China and Taiwan.
As explained by authors, Cheng and Athanasopolous, this is an example of how radio stations and Chinese audiences got around the bans by authorities:
Deng’s songs were officially banned by the Chinese government, which would not permit the broad-casting frequency of the Taiwanese radio station, The Voice of Free China, to be received anywhere on the mainland and constantly interrupted the radio frequency.
This obstacle was, however, not insurmountable: the eight radio frequency trans-mitters of The Voice of Free China adjusted their frequencies in response to this interference and Chinese audiences re-adjusted their radio frequency every three to five days.
Audiences living in coastal areas adopted the same strategy in order to listen to radio shows from Hong Kong. (Cheng and Athanasopolous, 2015/2016)
It is interesting to note that the authorities’ persistent efforts of keeping pop music influence, especially Teresa’s songs, out of the reach of the public reflected a more powerful attraction of her music itself.
Despite this milestone movement of culture in China, Teresa had never formally performed or set-foot in China, thus being still a ‘ghost’ singer, hidden behind recorders and radios to the mainland Chinese people.
Suffice to say, the people’s desire in mainland China for a feel of emotional freedom was so great that any kind of censorship of her music was greatly challenging for the government.
It is important to note that prior to the ban in China, Teresa never wrote or sang songs for any specific political or awareness agenda.
In a welcome interview at Taipei International Airport in 1980, Teresa had returned home to Taiwan after bring abroad for a year and a half. She was asked about her feelings, knowing her songs had penetrated the market and banned in mainland China where her songs were considered anti-revolutionary.
Teresa responded with much hesitation for words stating that it was complicated, but eventually expressed her happiness, that her “singing could provide the mainland people with comfort because their songs have been regimented and the lyrics that they listen to are like formula.”
It can be considered almost a miracle in the history of dissemination of music of how she entered the scene of China’s rising popular culture, and without any commercial advertisement or hype she is able to move the hearts of a whole nation with no prior intentions.
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References:
Dongfeng Tao, “Teresa Teng and the Spread of Pop Songs in Mainland China in the Early Reform Era” “Teresa Teng and the spread of pop songs in Mainland China in the early reform era,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2 (2022): 271
Hong-Chi Shiau, “Migration, nostalgia and identity negotiation: Teresa Teng in the Chinese Diaspora,” Int. J. Chinese Culture and Management, Vol. 2, No. 3 (2009): 264
Smithsonian Music, “Smithsonian Music,” The East is Red (English subtitles), accessed 14 November 2022, https://music.si.edu/video/east-red-%E4%B8%9C%E6%96%B9%E7%BA%A2-english-subtitles
ChenChing Cheng and George Athanasopoulous, “Music as Protest in Cold-War Asia”, Song and Popular Culture, 60/61 (2015/2016): 43
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