Sally Yeh, sometimes credited as Sally Yip or Yip Sin-man, is a former singer and actress. She has been described as a cultural icon and a voice of unparalleled grace in Hong Kong during the 1980s and 1990s, when Cantopop music reigned supreme across the region and the city's cinema captivated the world.
Career
Yeh performing in January 2011
Yeh's singing career started in the early 1980s, and her acting career started shortly thereafter, because she was singing songs specifically written for film soundtracks. She has released a total of thirty studio albums, plus compilations and live recordings.
Yeh first relocated to Taiwan to pursue a career in singing, and later relocated to Hong Kong, which at the time was the primary center of Chinese entertainment, for a better chance at fame. Ng Ching Yuen, who was the CEO of Warner Music Hong Kong, arranged for her then-husband, George Lam, to teach Yeh to sing and speak Hong Kong Cantonese.
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 on various levels. When Yeh has to read Chinese characters, she still relies on Mandarin romanization and Cantonese romanization for support.
During the 1990s in some of the music award and entertainment shows she participated in, she was able to demonstrate her proficiency in reading Chinese to some extents but struggled at times. In some examples, in the 1993 Jade Solid Gold Awards when she had to read out two written Chinese names of the female singers being nominated for an award that were written on tennis balls, she was able to read out Faye Wong's name, but struggled to read out Vivian Chow's name. In 1994 Jade Solid Gold Awards, she along with other singers were playing a word puzzle on a large board needing to figure out the song titles by filling in the empty spaces next to the few hinted words already written down, Sally was able to figure out the full title of the song she was guessing by seeing a few of the Chinese words already written down without the need for romanizations but upon needing to fill it out, she found it easier to write out the English phonetics of the song titles than to write out the complicated strokes of the Chinese characters needed to be written down.
In a July 2022 interview on CGTN's The Point, Yeh admitted that over the years of her career singing Chinese songs, very often she is not able to fully understand the lyrics and has to listen to the arrangements of the music to be able to appropriately relate to the emotions of the songs.
Yeh has received the Most Popular Hong Kong Female Singer award at the Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards four times (1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993). In 1992, Yeh collaborated with a couple of other western artists, recording "I'm Always Dreaming of You" with Tommy Page in 1992 and "I Believe in Love" with James Ingram the following year.
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, Yeh received the Golden Needle Award at the 33rd RTHK Top Ten Chinese Gold Song Music Award Ceremony. Yeh has also collaborated on a number of soundtracks (mostly for Tsui Hark's films 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.
Image and artistry
Yeh was one of the earliest Overseas Chinese celebrities to enter the entertainment industry in China during the 1980s and one of the few from an English-speaking country. She was also one of the earliest Mandarin speaking celebrities to enter the Hong Kong entertainment industry. In doing so, she paved a way for future divas such as Faye Wong, whom she collaborated with occasionally in her prime.
Personal life
On 17 July 1996, Yeh married Hong Kong pop star and composer-producer George Lam. She is stepmother to his two children.
Discography
1980: 春天的浮雕 Embossing Spring
1981: 愛的詩篇 Love Poem
1982: 愛的出發點 The Beginning of Love
1982: 答應我 Promise Me
1983: 再好的離別也會思念 (國/英)
1984: 葉蒨文 Sally (Cantonese/English)
1985: 長夜 My Love Goodnight (Cantonese), includes 200度 200 Degrees (cover of Madonna's Material Girl)
1986: Cha Cha Cha (Cantonese/Mandarin)
1987: 甜言密語 Sweet Words (Cantonese), includes 乾一杯 Cheers (林子祥 合) (cover of The Checkers' Song For U.S.A.) and 衝動 Impulse (cover of Madonna's True Blue)
Swordsman (Uncredited / She had to leave this troubled production before filming completed, but a couple shots of her remain in the film, her role was filled by Sharla Cheung Man) 笑傲江湖 (1990)
