Hologram Concerts Planned for Teresa Teng’s 30th Death Anniversary Year; Late Singer’s Brother Says He Also Wants to Release Full Catalogue of Her Songs

By Masatsugu Sonoda / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent

20:00 JST, May 7, 2025

TAIPEI — Thursday will mark the 30 years since the untimely death of popular Taiwan singer Teresa Teng. Ahead of the anniversary, Teng Chang-fu, her older brother and the chairman of the board of the Teresa Teng Foundation, sat down with The Yomiuri Shimbun for an interview in Taipei on Monday.

During the interview, Teng revealed plans to hold concerts using holographic technology to project a 3D image of Teresa.

“I feel honored that Teresa’s fans still love her songs now,” Teng said, fondly remembering his sister, who made her professional debut at the age of 14 and went on to build a successful career in Taiwan, Japan and other countries where she was admired as “the Asian Diva.” She died from bronchial asthma in 1995 while traveling in Thailand. She was 42.

“Her life in Japan was pretty tough,” Teng recalled. He says his sister studied Japanese for two hours from 5 a.m. every day and toured across Japan for publicity activities. She enchanted many fans in Japan with such hit songs as “Tsugunai” (Atonement) and “Toki no nagare ni mi o makase” (Trust your body to the flow of time).

Her beautiful voice was loved in mainland China as well. At one point, the Chinese authorities put restrictions on her songs, saying they were “unhealthy,” but the country’s young people enjoyed listening to her songs on cassette tapes brought in from Hong Kong.

In the late 1980s, there was a plan for the singer to hold a concert in Shanghai, but she criticized the Tiananmen incident in 1989, saying she would never go to mainland China unless the country became a democracy. So such a concert did not materialize during her lifetime. This year, her 30th death anniversary, many concerts commemorating the occasion will apparently take place in various places in China.

“I’d like to release an organized catalogue of all 1,476 of Teresa’s songs, so that they can be passed down to future generations,” Teng said determinedly.