This musician was interviewed by Jacob Henning on April 7, 2006. She was born in western China, close to the Russian border. The family moved back to Beijing when she was three years old. Her parents were both artists, with her father being a musician and her mother an actress. She came to the United States after she completed an undergraduate degree in Music Performance at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She had left home at age 13 to study music in a boarding school and was sent to the countryside when schools were closed during the Cultural Revolution. When she came to the United States she enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She earned a Masters in piano performance and later her doctorate at Boston University. Another sister came to the United States and is a computer programmer in Los Angeles. Her parents and a brother remained in China. She is happy to share her story and to have her identity clear on the printed transcripts and DVD copies of her interview that are deposited at the Washburn University archives and at the Kansas State Historical Society archives, but prefers not to have her identity available over the internet.

Interview Full Text Transcript