Relive Teresa Teng magic at newly opened memorial hall
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One of late Taiwan pop diva Teresa Teng's major regrets was that she never sang on the Chinese mainland. But mainland fans of the singer (1953-1995) now have an unexpected bonus.
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Top: A visitor watches a portrait of Teresa Teng at the Beijing Teresa Teng Cultural Relic Museum. Above: A pair of Teng's slingbacks are displayed on top of one of the luggage cases she bought in Hong Kong in 1969. [China Daily] |
A memorial hall for their idol was opened in Beijing on Dec 10. The Beijing Teresa Teng Cultural Relic Museum on Qianmen Street features a collection of Teng's costumes, jewelry and furniture, grouped around eight themes.
The walls of the museum are painted pink and purple, her favorite colors. Teng's old songs, such as Story of the Small Town and Sweetness, playing in the background, will take visitors back to the 1970s and 80s when Teng was queen of the Chinese pop music scene.
"All the items are from Taiwan and are being displayed in the mainland for the first time," says Teng Chang-an, the singer's older brother and curator of the museum.
He established the first museum dedicated to his sister in April, 2010, in Taiwan, 15 years after Teng's death.
One of the items on display is a brilliantly tailored white cheongsam, which Teng wore for her One Billion Applause concert at Taipei Gymnasium when she was 31.
While singing, she would take off her chiffon shawl to show off her charming figure.
Also on display are several other cheongsams she wore for The One and Only concert in Tokyo, Japan, in 1985.
"She had them customized in Hong Kong especially for the concert," Teng Chang-an says. "She told her Japanese audience every time she struck a pose on stage, 'I'm Teresa Teng from Taiwan, China'."
A room separated by transparent glass displays furniture and decorations from her guest room, dining room and bedroom.
One of these is a set of table and chairs she made for her mother, which has colorful hand paintings of magpies, peonies and bamboos.
On it sits a custom-made square-shaped plate meant for her mother's mahjong set.
A notebook on the tea table standing in the corner of the room was discovered by her family after she died.
One of the poems in it, written in 1992, was revised into the song Star Wish.
The young Teng loved to shop. In 1969, when the then 16-year-old went to Hong Kong for a charity event, she ordered 20 popular luggage cases of the same pattern but different sizes that fit one inside the other - like Russian Matryoshka dolls.
"Only a tenth of the contents of the Kaohsiung Teresa Teng Cultural Relic Museum in Taiwan are displayed in Beijing," Teng Chang-an says. "We welcome mainlanders to come to Taiwan to know more about Teresa."
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