Speaking of sirens, Faye Wong is primarily known for her singing but I was very impressed with her acting in Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express. She is back on the silver screen again in Wong Kar Wai’s latest film 2046 which is where the above photo of her came from. She plays two roles in the film one of which is a fictional android character in the year 2046.
Faye Wong was born in Beijing. Her mother was a singer of “artistic traditonal songs” and her father is a Teresa Teng fan. Her family’s love of music influenced her growth towards that direction. She began voice training for 5 years during high school. After graduating high school, she started modeling for China Airlines but music was her first love or so she thought then.At the age of 18, she went to Hong Kong by herself in order to become a pop singer, participated in many auditions, and then signed a contract with Cinepoly. She debuted as a “Shirley Wong” called “A girl from North”, but she didn’t have the success she envisioned in her debut album “Shirley”. She had always wanted to see America and took an opportunity to study abroad. She studied music at Atlanta college in New York City then she came back to Hong Kong to record “Coming Home”. In 1992, “A broken-hearted woman” from that album was a smash hit and she became one of the greatest female pop stars in Hong Kong.
Afterwards, she continued her sucessful rise in the Asian music industry and became a role model for young Chinese girls everywhere dreaming to become musicians in their own right. She sold out her Circle Concert (180,000 tickets) in Hong Kong, America and Canada proving her overwhelming popularity worldwide. One of her more recent achievements is her “eyes on me” song that was a hit from the Final Fantasy VIII game further increasing her popularity and recognition.
For a more detailed biography of Faye Wong, take a look at her entry on wikipedia.
Faye Wong Appreciation Society has over 150 photos in their photo section including the one above (better than google image search selection).
I was looking for a good website featuring Faye Wong’s music with sample audio/video clips but didn’t come across one. Please post in the comment section if you know of any good websites featuring Faye Wong that you recommend!
One amazing thing about Faye Wong is what a great English language singer she is. Although Mandarin is my mother tongue (I grew up in Taiwan), I actually think “Eyes on You” (not “Me”) is her by far her best song – her emotional expression is incredible, and her diction is perfect! (I say this as some one who is a professional singer in both languages – plus Japanese – myself.)
Ironically I was never a big fan of her’s until I heard this song – too many of her Chinese songs are just simple easy listening pop. But this song showed me just how immensely talented she actually is. I only wish she’d do more English songs!
Sachiko, thanks for your comments and the correction to the song title! I copied that biography from an old fansite I found and there were lots of grammatical errors but I didn’t catch that one. I just edited the entry and corrected the song title.
Shes hot, shes sexy, she’s a multimillionaire, and she has a daughter.
I think she has acheived what most women cant achieve already.
Except hapiness it seems – her unlickiness in love is well known. It seems she tries to go for the latest idols to ‘improve’ her image, but they just use her for their own careers then dump her.
And badboy I have to apaologise – it seems which title is correct depends on who you ask! The CD I have has “Eyes on You”, but most other sources seem to quote it as “Eyes on Me”. So it seems you were right afer all! Chinese copies often mess this sort of thing up.
I think perhaps I can resolve the confusion here: the lyrics refer to “eyes on me”. So badboy was right! I’ve taken the liberty of editing it back – hope you don’t mind.
Although I like art-house movies and Asian movies, I did not like 2046. Too long, vague and pretentious.
Robin, I have heard others say similar things about 2046. Too bad since Wong Kar Wai had so much talent to work with in this film. It has not been universally panned though; I have seen some professional reviews that liked it.
It also has a rather good IMDB.com ranking: 7.6. So it can’t be complete rubbish! 😉 I just didn’t like it. Maybe I was not in the mood. But we watched it with 4 people, nobody liked it and that created an atmosphere were we started hating it even more. You know how it goes…
Someone just posted a message in theAsia Film Yahoo Group about a website with free Faye Wong MP3s.
Bohemian Rhapsdody?! Faye Wong clearly has a lot of talent, but boy does she squander it. Actually, this is a common problem for Chinese pop artists in my experience.