Frances Yip Lai-yee (born 1947) is a Hong Kong English pop and C… Read Full Bio ↴葉麗儀
Frances Yip Lai-yee (born 1947) is a Hong Kong English pop and Cantopop singer. She is best known for performing many of the theme songs for television series produced by TVB in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Born in 1947, Yip is of Hakka ancestry, and is the youngest of 5 siblings. She grew up in a rural area in Hong Kong, and studied in St. Clare's Girls' School, an English Catholic school.
Her first singing job was in 1969 when she won a talent contest called Sharp's Night Four Lights Competition on Hong Kong television where she met the composer, Joseph Koo. Koo used Yip to sing commercial jingles while she was working as a secretary in HSBC, one was the jingles was a song about savings account for HSBC. Her first record, Bu Liao Qing (Love Without End) was recorded in the same year. She recorded predominantly English covers of Mandarin songs and Mandarin songs then.
In 1972, Yip and Joseph Koo went to Japan's World Singing gathering in Nippon Budokan. In 1973, Yip was working for Cathay Pacific as an Ambassador of Hong Kong under Hong Kong Tourism Board for a year, and her album, Discovery, was based on her experiences travelling. Discovery was sung in nine different languages to represent the 9 major destinations for Cathay Pacific then, and the album inspired a London talent agent to find her. She signed onto EMI records and lived in London for two years.[3]It was a worldwide contract, meaning she can have one English album released in 6 different languages in different areas of the world. Since then, she had renewed her two-year contract until now.
Yip hit international fame with her signature tune, The Bund from the TVB drama of the same title.[4] After she recorded The Bund, she returned to Hong Kong.
In her 45-year career, Yip has released more than 80 albums, mostly of songs in American English, Indonesian, Thai, Malay, Mexican Spanish, Japanese, Tagalog, Hong Kong Cantonese, and Taiwanese Mandarin. She has performed on television, and in films, concerts and cabarets in more than 30 countries on five continents. Her linguistic skills, with unique interpretations of lyrics in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, as well as several other Asian languages, have led to a fan base across a wide range of cultures and countries.
Yip has worked with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, the Macau Chinese Orchestra, the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, the Youth Orchestra from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Thammasat University Philharmonic Orchestra in Bangkok as well as large orchestras in Kuala Lumpur.
Yip achieved worldwide recognition when she was selected by the Hong Kong government to be a co-presenter at the British Farewell Ceremony to mark the transfer of sovereignty in Hong Kong. The event on June 30, 1997, was watched by a television audience estimated at 120 million, in more than 80 countries worldwide.
In 2012, Yip recorded her first Christian album, Grace and Glory Psalm 84.
Yip is fluent in Chinese (Hong Kong Cantonese and Taiwanese Mandarin) and English. She often spends time in Sydney where her son and grandchildren live.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996, but was considered free of cancer in 2002. To celebrate eight years of being cancer-free, in 2010, she held a charity concert in Kuala Lumpur to benefit cancer research and treatment.
Since 2013, she and her husband have lived in the rural suburbs of Sydney, Australia with their son and grandson. They have Australian citizenship, and also own rental properties in England. She occasionally returns to Hong Kong to perform and make TV appearances.
Green Is the Mountain
Frances Yip Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Jian shui lan
Ali Shan de guniang mei ru shui ya
Ali Shan de shaonian zhuang ru shan
Gao shan chang qing
Jian shui chang lan
Guniang he na shaonian yong bu fen na
Bi shui chang weizhe qing shan zhuan
Green is the high mountain
Blue is the mountain stream
The girl of Ali Mountain is pretty as the water
The youth of Ali Mountain is strong as the mountain
Mountain forever green
Water forever blue
The girl and that youth never will be parted
Like the blue water flows around the green mountain
The lyrics of Frances Yip's song Green Is the Mountain communicate a strong sense of natural beauty and the timeless connection between young love and the natural environment. The song refers to the color green, which represents the mountain that stands tall and majestic, and the color blue to indicate the stream that flows past it. The analogy suggests the permanence of the natural world, which forever remains green and blue, while everything else around it changes.
The song describes a girl and a boy from Ali Shan, which is the highest mountain in Taiwan. The girl and boy mentioned in the song represent the human spirit and are compared to the natural beauty of Ali Mountain. The song suggests that young love is as pure as water and as resilient as the mountains. The song's lyrics suggest that the connection between the girl and the boy from Ali Shan is as strong and enduring as the mountain and the stream.
Overall, Green Is the Mountain exemplifies the interdependence between young love and the natural world. The narrative emphasizes that we should use nature as a metaphor to understand love and relationships' intricacies, persevering through the challenges that our love may encounter.
Line by Line Meaning
Green is the high mountain
The high mountain is filled with greenery and natural beauty
Blue is the mountain stream
The flowing mountain stream is blue and vibrant
The girl of Ali Mountain is pretty as water
The girl from Ali Mountain is as beautiful as the flowing water
The youth of Ali Mountain is strong as the mountain
The young people from Ali Mountain are strong and resilient like the towering mountain
Mountain forever green
The mountain is always covered in greenery
Water forever blue
The flowing water is always blue and fresh
The girl and that youth never will be parted
The girl and the youth will never be separated from each other
Like the blue water flows around the green mountain
The blue water flows around the green mountain symbolizing the unbreakable bond between the girl and youth of Ali Mountain
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
NW
on Shang Hai Tan
I assume this "translation" was a joke. OP literally just made everything up. Not a single line is even REMOTELY right. I got a good laugh out of it though.
Kek Joo
on Shang Hai Tan
I just happened to see your translated lyrics. I am afraid they are absolutely incorrect. The song speaks of the rise and ebbing of the tides and likens the experiences of love and hate/revenge to the changing tides. There is no mention of buildings (long pang long lau means the tide/current rises and ebbs). Shi hei shi sau is not it’s black, it’s majestic but whether it is joy or whether it is sorrow. Etc etc. This is very in line with the themes of the drama and movie versions which has this song as its theme song. This is a melancholic song and not one prompting SH as a tourist attraction toon
Janet Lim Swee Kim
on Bengawan Solo (Indonesia)
Very beautiful , you , love to listen to your song, thank you Mdm. Yip.
Janet Lim Swee Kim
on Bengawan Solo (Indonesia)
Many thanks Yip Lai Yee mdm.