Faye Wong
Faye Wong is a Chinese singer-songwriter and actress. Early in her career, she briefly used the stage name Shirley Wong. Born in Beijing, she moved to British Hong Kong at the age of 18. She debuted with the Cantonese album Shirley Wong in 1989 and came to public attention by combining alternative music with mainstream Chinese pop. Since the late 1990s, Wong has recorded mostly in her native Mandarin, with some songs recorded in languages such as English and Japanese.
One of the biggest pop stars in the Chinese-speaking world, Wong has also gained followings in Japan and Southeast Asia. In the West, she is perhaps best known for starring in Wong Kar-wai's films Chungking Express and 2046. Upon her second marriage in 2005, she withdrew from the limelight, though she has sporadically returned to the stage. Often titled "diva" or "heavenly queen" in Chinese, Wong has gained a reputation for her "cool" personality. In Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture, Jeroen de Kloet characterised her as "singer, actress, mother, celebrity, royalty, sex symbol and diva all at the same time".
In 2000, Wong was recognised by Guinness World Records as the best selling Cantopop female artist, having sold an estimated 9.7 million copies of her albums by March 2000. In 2009, Wong was voted the second most influential Chinese celebrity of the past 60 years in a poll conducted by the State Council Information Office to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, receiving seven million votes and ranking behind only Teresa Teng.
Early life
Wong was born at Peking Union Medical College Hospital in Dongcheng District, Beijing in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. Her father was Wang Youlin, a mining engineer and second son of Wang Zhaomin, member of the Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China. Wang Youlin had been parentally betrothed to Li Min, sister of Taiwanese writer Li Ao, but when Wang Zhaomin left for Taiwan upon the Communist takeover, Wang Youlin, then a left-leaning college student, stayed in mainland China and later wed Xia Guiying, a revolutionary music soprano with China Coal Mine Art Troupe, who would be Wong's mother. Wong had a brother named Wang Yi, who was two years older than her and died in his fifties due to illness.Wong grew up in the Qingniangou area near Andingmen, where the residential communities affiliated with the coal mining industry were situated. She attended Ditan Primary School, where she served as the class's arts and cultural coordinator. She then attended the Beijing No. 145 Middle School, before transferring to Beijing Dongzhimen Middle School. In 1987, she was admitted to the Biology Department of Xiamen University through the national college entrance exam but chose to move to Hong Kong instead.
Music career
1985–1988: Beginnings
As a student, Wong already was involved in singing and attracted interest from several publishers. On occasions, the school had to hide her artistic activities from her strict mother, who as a professional saw singing as a dead-end career. Despite her mother's opposition, Wong released 6 low-cost cover albums from 1985 to 1987 while still in high school, all in the form of cassettes, mostly consisting of songs by her personal idol, iconic Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng. For the last of these early recordings, the producer Wei Yuanqiang chose the title Wong Fei Collection, intending to show that he recognised a distinctive talent in the teenager.In 1987, after giving up the chance to study biology at Xiamen University, she migrated to Hong Kong to join her father, who had been working there for a few years. The plan was for her to stay there for a year to fulfill the permanent residency requirement, and go to study in Australia. However, since Wong did not know a word of Cantonese, the language spoken in Hong Kong, she experienced great loneliness. Following a brief modeling stint, she began taking singing lessons as a distraction with Tai See-Chung, an Indonesian-born Chinese who had gone to school in Mainland China before tutoring Hong Kong superstars Anita Mui, Andy Lau, Leon Lai and Aaron Kwok.
With Tai's recommendation, the 19-year-old signed with Cinepoly Records after winning third place in an ABU singing contest in 1988. It was not only an unplanned move on the part of Wong, since her mother disapproved of a singing career, but also a risky move on the part of Chan Siu-Bo, Cinepoly's general manager, since Mainlanders were stereotyped as "backwards" in Hong Kong.
1989–1991: the Shirley Wong period
At the request of Cinepoly, Wong picked one of the "sophisticated" stage names, Wong Jing Man, with an English name Shirley," offered by the company through a fortune-teller, to replace her "Mainland-sounding" name. In 1989, her debut album Shirley Wong sold 25,000 copies and won her bronze at the "Chik Chak New Artist Award". Two more albums followed, similarly featuring many cover songs by artists from the US and Japan. They sold 10,000 copies each, despite relentless promotions by the company. Many in Hong Kong perceived her to be "backwards", lacking personality.At the time, both Wong and her then-agent Leslie Chan were in conflicts with Cinepoly under Chan Siu-Bo's successor Lal Dayaram. Leslie Chan then sold Wong's contract for 2 million HKD to Taiwanese singer Lo Ta-yu. Under the arrangement of Lo, who founded Music Factory in 1990, Wong went to the United States for professional training at the end of 1991. She initially went to Los Angeles with plans to learn keyboards, but missed the class registration deadline. She then moved to New York, living with Wawa, another new artist signed by Lo, at the house of Lo's sister, Jennifer, in Flushing. Wong attended classes at the Barbizon School, the Martha Graham School and with personal singing tutors for about two months. In 1996, she explained New York's influence on her:
Even though Wong found the experience enlightening, her less than tactful communication led Lo to decide to end the contract with her by the time she returned to Hong Kong. The two never collaborated or shared the stage thereafter. With the help of her teacher Tai See-Chung, Wong found a new agent in Katie Chan, who has remained her agent as well as her daughter's ever since.
1992–1995: ''Coming Home'', ''No Regrets'', ''100,000 Whys'', ''Random Thoughts'', ''Mystery'', ''Sky'', ''Decadent Sounds of Faye'' and ''Di-Dar''
The 1992 album Coming Home, the first release since her return from New York, prominently featured on the cover her new English name "Faye", a homophone to her given Chinese name, and the Chinese character "Jing", a reference to her hometown Beijing. From then on she changed her stage name back to "Wang Fei". Coming Home incorporated R&B influences and was a change in musical direction from the more traditional Cantopop fare of her earlier albums. Coming Home also included her first English-language number, "Kisses in the Wind". Wong stated in a 1994 concert that she very much liked this song, after which various websites listed it as her personal favourite; however, in a 1998 CNN interview she declined to name one favourite song, saying that there were too many, and in 2003 she stated that she no longer liked her old songs.One of the songs on Coming Home, "Fragile Woman", a cover of a Japanese song "Rouge" originally composed by Miyuki Nakajima and sung by Naomi Chiaki, became Wong's first hit after being featured in the popular TVB drama The Greed of Man. The favourable reception of "Fragile Woman" led Wong to abandon her original plans to return to Los Angeles to continue her studies. Instead, she stayed in Hong Kong to build on her newfound success.
In February 1993, she wrote the Mandarin lyrics for her ballad "No Regrets" which led many to praise her as a gifted lyricist. In February, it became the title track to her album No Regrets. No Regrets features soft contemporary numbers, a few dance tracks and two versions of the title ballad: Wong's Mandarin version, and a Cantonese version. In September 1993, her next album 100,000 Whys showed considerable alternative music influences from the West, including the popular song "Cold War", a cover of "Silent All These Years" by Tori Amos. In 1992–93 she also appeared in TVB shows such as File of Justice II and Legendary Ranger.
Wong has named the Scottish post-punk group Cocteau Twins among her favourite bands, and their influence was clear on her next Cantonese album, Random Thoughts. Her Cantonese version of The Cranberries' "Dreams" was featured in Wong Kar-wai's film Chungking Express, and gained lasting popularity. Besides covering songs and learning distinctive vocal techniques, Wong recorded her own compositions: "Pledge", co-written with her then-boyfriend, Beijing rock star Dou Wei, as well as her first and only spoken-word song "Exit". The latter is a rare window into her outlook on life, including her worries about her future marriage with Dou, her conversion to Buddhism, her self-criticism, and her cynicism about the show business.
Besides two Cantonese albums in 1994, Wong released two other albums in Mandarin in Taiwan, Mystery and Sky, which propelled her to fame in the Mandarin-speaking world. The song "I'm Willing" in Mystery would become her trademark Mandopop song till this day, and has been covered by other singers such as Gigi Leung, Sammi Cheng and Jay Chou. Sky was seen by fans as a successful amalgam of artistic experimentation and commercialism. While her hits in Hong Kong were noticeably alternative, her two Mandarin albums were more lyrical and traditional. Critics generally credit Taiwanese producer Yang Ming-huang for their success.
With four best-selling albums in Cantonese and Mandarin and a record-breaking 18 consecutive concerts in Hong Kong, Wong had established herself as a diva, or "heavenly queen" as she is commonly known in the Chinese world, by the mid-1990s. Meanwhile, her distaste for Hong Kong's entertainment industry and media environment only grew. She was frequently in touch with the Beijing rock scene, where Dou Wei was a leading light and whose influence distinguished her from the mainstream pop music in Hong Kong.
In 1995, she released Decadent Sounds of Faye, a cover album of songs originally recorded by her idol Teresa Teng. A duet with Teng was planned for the album, but she died before this could be recorded. Decadent Sounds sold well despite initial negative criticism, and has come to be recognised as an example of imaginative covering by recent critics.
Faye Wong and Dou Wei were the winner and the runner-up to the 1995 MTV International Viewer's Choice Award, with the music videos "Chess" and "Black Dream" respectively. In December, she released her Cantonese album Di-Dar which mixes an alternative yodelling style with a touch of Indian and Middle Eastern flavour. This album was a success, partly because it was so different from the mainstream Cantopop music, but—ironically—a couple of very traditional romantic songs topped the charts.