| Sally Yeh | |
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Sally Yeh performing at the “Sally Yeh HKPO Live – Music in Motion Concert 2005” with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra on August 2005.
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| Background information | |
| Chinese name | 葉蒨文 (traditional) |
| Chinese name | 叶倩文 (simplified) |
| Pinyin | Yè Qiànwén (Mandarin) |
| Jyutping | jip6 sin3 man4 (Cantonese) |
| Born | 30 September 1961 Taipei,  Republic of China |
| Other names | 沙麗 |
| Origin | Taiwan |
| Occupation | Singer Actress |
| Years active | 1980–present |
| Genre(s) | Cantopop Mandopop |
| Voice type(s) | Mezzo-soprano |
| Spouse(s) | George Lam |
Sally Yeh (born 30 September 1961), sometimes credited as Sally Yip or Yip Sin-Man, is a Taiwanese-Canadian Cantopop singer and actress.
Yeh is a Canadian citizen. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, she immigrated to Canada at 4 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 Cantonese, Mandarin, and English.
She 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.
She 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.
Due to the fact that she 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 have a basic Mandarin Chinese conversation, but was completely illiterate in Chinese. Sally had a natural talent for singing and acting, but unfortunately due to the earlier decades of the 1970s and 1980s when Asians were not welcomed in the Canadian entertainment business and since Sally wanted to enter the entertainment business, she decided to return to her parent’s native country Taiwan to have a chance to become famous in the entertainment business. In Taiwan she worked hard to make improvements on her Chinese in order 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. Sally learned to speak Cantonese when she relocated to Hong Kong and had to continue to utilize romanizations to read the Cantonese lyrics. Since then, she 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 interaction with the Chinese entertainment business, she began to make improvements on speaking both Mandarin and Cantonese, including reading Chinese characters. However, because she never had a formal Chinese education, her Chinese reading proficiency still remains at the basic level. When she has to read Chinese lyrics, she still relies on Mandarin and Cantonese romanization for support.
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