Teresa Teng

Teng Li-chun (; 29 January 1953 – 8 May 1995), commonly known as Teresa Teng, was a Taiwanese singer, actress, musician and philanthropist, renowned for her mellifluous voice and romantic melodies. Referred to by some as the "Eternal Queen of Asian Pop," she is considered one of the most most successful and influential Asian pop 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."

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. She is credited as Asia's first musical superstar and by some as the pioneer of contemporary 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 nations 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 the natives of the island. She was nicknamed "the patriotic entertainer" and "the soldiers' sweetheart."

Teng recorded more than 1,700 songs throughout her career, starting when she was 14 years old, 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 all over the world.

According to available IFPI statistics, Teng has sold over 48 million albums as of 2010 (excluding 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. In 2010, on the eve of "March 8th International Women's Day," she was voted "the most influential woman in modern China" by the Chinese media and radio stations in and outside the country. Teng was inducted into the "Popular Music Hall of Fame" at the Koga Masao Music Museum in Japan in 2007, making her the only non-Japanese national to do so. Provided by Wikipedia