I Discovered More Of The Late Teresa Teng's Music Because Of F4

F4 was the thing back in the 2000s. I remember watching Meteor Garden as my first Chinese TV Drama (though it came from Republic of China aka Taiwan, not the People's Republic of China). Filipinos called those Chinese language series, Chinovela. I couldn't get over when my Chinese language teacher said that F4 taught me the importance of learning Mandarin. I was still stuck with the American dream back then.

I watched the F4 concert back when VCDs were still the thing. There was the Fantasy Live Concert World Tour in Hong Kong last 2023. Jerry Yan sang the song "Moon Represents My Heart". The song was originally sang by Chen Fan Lan, had a cover by Poon Sow Keng, but was made famous by the late Teresa Teng. My favorite version was by the late Leslie Cheung. 

I decided to listen to an audio CD containing Teresa's songs. We were given a CD copy of songs containing Teresa's songs. 

Teresa sang a cover version of Zhou Xuan's song "When Will You Return". Zhou Xuan has been dead for more than 50 years -- she died during Mao Zedong's tyrannical regime. However, I didn't know Zhou Xuan at that time. The more I listened to that song -- the more I thought of what Shan Cai's mother would sing in Meteor Garden's first season. Meteor Garden II had Shan Cai's father "Wine Added to Coffee" while he was drunk.  

It's crazy but I ended up appreciating a dead singer's songs -- only after the singer had died! I didn't care too much about Chinese music growing up. Secretly, I wanted to go to America and get a blonde woman. However, I grew to appreciate the Chinese style of doing music thanks to F4. 

Not surprisingly, the late Barbie Xu's final resting place is in Chin Pao San Cemetery. Teresa's body was laid to rest at Chin Pao San Cemetery too. I'm still freaked out how F4 led me to Teresa's wondeful music. Eventually, one of their closest friends, Barbie, would get interred where Teresa got laid to rest. 

After this, it didn't take long for Jolin Tsai's music to lead me to another dead singer, Anita Mui. Pretty much, certain works of out end up outliving the artist, huh?