The New York Times
Date: Jan. 21, 2019
By: Javier C. Hernández
Guo Xueyan singing Teresa Teng’s songs with a live band at a Beijing restaurant that is a shrine to the Taiwanese pop star. Credit: Yan Cong for The New York Times
BEIJING — A beer in one hand, a microphone in the other, Meng Xiaoli stood in a crowded restaurant and began to sing.
Your smile is as sweet as honey,
Just like flowers blooming in the spring breeze.
I wonder where I’ve seen you.
During the workweek, Mr. Meng, 53, a strait-laced budget analyst who wears a red Chinese Communist Party pin on his lapel, spends his days shuttling between meetings and poring over reports as a budget analyst for a state-owned firm.
But on weekends, he retreats to what he calls his “spiritual home,” a two-story restaurant and museum in Beijing that is a shrine to the woman he considers a goddess: the Taiwanese pop singer Teresa Teng, one of Asia’s most celebrated artists.
“She knows what it’s like to be human — to find love and to make mistakes,” Mr. Meng said.
Ms. Teng, who died suddenly in 1995 at age 42, was renowned for turning traditional Taiwanese and Chinese folk songs into maudlin Western-style hits. She was once banned in the mainland, her music denounced by the authorities as “decadent” and “pornographic.” [FULL STORY]
