Sally Yeh
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Sally Yeh | |||||||||||
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葉蒨文 | |||||||||||
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Pronunciation | Yip6 Sin6 Man4 | ||||||||||
Born | Taipei, Taiwan | 30 September 1961||||||||||
Nationality | Taiwanese, Canadian | ||||||||||
Occupation(s) | Singer actress | ||||||||||
Years active | 1980–present | ||||||||||
Spouse | |||||||||||
Awards | Hong Kong Film Awards – Best Original Film Song 1988 A Chinese Ghost Story Golden Melody Awards – Best Female Mandarin Artist 1994 | ||||||||||
Musical career | |||||||||||
Origin | Taiwan | ||||||||||
Genres | Cantopop Mandopop | ||||||||||
Chinese name | |||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 葉蒨文 | ||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 叶倩文 | ||||||||||
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Sally Yeh (born 30 September 1961), sometimes credited as Sally Yip or Yip Sin-Man, is a Taiwanese-Canadian Cantopop singer and actress.
Overview
Yeh has Canadian citizenship. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, she immigrated to Canada at the age of four with her family and grew up in Victoria, British Columbia. Yeh's singing career started in the early 1980s, shortly after her acting career started as she sang songs specifically written for the movie soundtrack. She has released a total of thirty studio albums, plus compilations and live recordings. Yeh speaks English, Mandarin and Cantonese in that order of proficiency. Although her singing Cantonese is clear in songs, one can tell Cantonese is not her mother tongue when she speaks it.
Yeh has also collaborated on a number of soundtracks (mostly on Tsui Hark's movies with scores by Wong Jim), including "Lai Ming But Yiu Loi" from A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), which won the Best Original Song award at the 7th Hong Kong Film Awards.
Yeh has received the Most Popular Hong Kong Female Singer award at the Jade Solid Gold Top Ten Awards four times (1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993). In 1992, Sally Yeh collaborated with a couple of other western artists, recording "Dreaming of You" with Tommy Page in 1992 and "I Believe in Love" with James Ingram the following year. On 17 July 1996, Yeh married Hong Kong pop star and composer-producer George Lam. In 2002, Yeh re-entered the Cantopop market, released the record "Can You Hear", and performed a series of concerts in different countries. In 2011, Sally Yeh received the Golden Needle Award at the 33rd RTHK Top Ten Chinese Gold Song Music Award Ceremony.
Language fluency
![]() | This section possibly contains original research. (August 2018) |
Due to the fact that Yeh immigrated to Canada with her family from Taiwan at a very young age and grew up in Canada, she grew up speaking fluent English. However, because she did grow up in a Mandarin Chinese speaking household, she was able to converse in Mandarin Chinese while being completely illiterate in written Chinese. Yeh had a natural talent for singing and acting, but unfortunately due to the earlier decades of the 1970s and 1980s when Asians were not especially welcomed in the Canadian entertainment business, the area in which Yeh wanted to make her career, she decided to return to Taiwan to have a chance at stardom. In Taiwan, she worked hard to make improvements on her Chinese to stay in the Chinese entertainment business. However, because she was illiterate in Chinese, her managers had to create romanized or English phonetic versions to help her read the Mandarin Chinese song lyrics. Later, she relocated to Hong Kong, which at the time was the primary center of Chinese entertainment, for a better chance at fame. Yeh learned to speak Cantonese when she relocated to Hong Kong and had to continue to utilize romanizations to read the Cantonese lyrics.
Since then, Yeh has focused primarily on the Hong Kong Cantonese entertainment world. With the support of utilizing romanization to read Chinese characters in Mandarin and Cantonese in addition to her interactions within the Chinese entertainment business, she began to make improvements on both her spoken Mandarin and Cantonese, including reading Chinese characters. However, because she never had a formal Chinese education, her proficiency in reading Chinese is still limited to the elementary basics. When Yeh has to read Chinese lyrics, she still relies on Mandarin and Cantonese romanization for support.[1]
Discography
Filmography
- Honest Little Ma 一根火柴 (1980)
- Marianna 賓妹 (a.k.a. 你要活著回去) (1982)
- Crimson Street 殺人愛情街 (1982)
- Golden Queen Commando (a.k.a. Amazon Commando / Jackie Chan's Crime Force / Sexy Commando) 紅粉兵團 (1982)
- Pink Force Commando (Sequel to Golden Queens Commando) 紅粉游俠 (a.k.a. 烈血長天) (1982)
- A Flower in the Storm (a.k.a. Falling in the Rain Flowers) 飄零雨中花 (1983)
- A Certain Romance 少女日記 (1984)
- Funny Face (cameo) 醜小鴨 (1984)
- Shanghai Blues 上海之夜 (1984)
- The Occupant (a.k.a. The Tenant) 靈氣迫人 (1984)
- Teppanyaki (a.k.a. New Mr. Boo, Teppanyaki / Mr. Boo 6) 鐵板燒 (1984)
- Mob Busters 惡漢笑擊隊 (a.k.a.情報販子) (1985)
- Seven Foxes X陷阱 (1985)
- Cupid One 愛神一號 (1985)
- Just For Fun 空心少爺 (1985)
- The Protector 威龍猛探 (1985) (Hong Kong version)
- Welcome 補鑊英雄 (1985)
- Aces Go Places 4 (a.k.a. Mad Mission IV / You Never Die Twice) 最佳拍擋IV之千里救差婆 (1986)
- Peking Opera Blues 刀馬旦 (1986)
- The Laser Man (1988)
- The Diary of a Big Man (1988) 大丈夫日記 (1988)
- I Love Maria (a.k.a. RoboForce) 鐵甲無敵瑪利亞 (1988)
- The Killer 喋血雙雄 (1989)
- The Banquet (cameo) 豪門夜宴 (1991)
- Sisters of the World Unite 莎莎嘉嘉站起來 (1991)
- Love Under the Sun (2003)
See also
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
References
- ^ https://musiccanada.wordpress.com/tag/sally-yip/
- ^ "Sally Yeh". IMDb. Retrieved 8 March 2010.
- ^ "Sally Yeh". chinesemov.com. Retrieved 8 March 2010.
External links
- 1961 births
- Living people
- Actresses from Taipei
- Actresses from Victoria, British Columbia
- Canadian musicians of Taiwanese descent
- Canadian emigrants to Hong Kong
- Cantopop singers
- Hong Kong film actresses
- Hong Kong female singers
- Hong Kong people of Taiwanese descent
- Hong Kong Mandopop singers
- Hong Kong television actresses
- Musicians from Taipei
- Musicians from Victoria, British Columbia
- Taiwanese emigrants to Canada
- Taiwanese female singers
- Taiwanese film actresses
- 20th-century Hong Kong actresses
- 21st-century Hong Kong actresses