If there is one person who best signifies China's growing hunger for rock and roll, it's Cui Jian. Also known as Lao Cui, he is recognized as the father of rock and roll in China and is often compared to Elvis, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen by the western media. An accomplished classical trumpet player, Cui became a member of the prestigious Beijing Philharmonic Orchestra in 1981. It was at this time that he became smitten by Western rock and roll, listening to cassette tapes brought to China by tourists and foreign students. Inspired by the likes of Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel, he learned to play guitar and began singing in public. In 1984, Cui and six other classical musicians formed the band "Seven Ply Board." Playing western pop songs, they performed in small restaurants and hotels around Beijing. It was one of the first bands of its kind in China. By the mid-eighties the bulk of western rock music had found its way into China's cultural underground. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Talking Heads, and The Police all influenced Cui. Even early on in his career, Cui's songs showed a preoccupation with weightier issues than the usual superficial pop ballads of the day. He dared to address such sensitive topics as individualism and sexuality. To a generation numbed by the deadening propaganda of the Cultural Revolution, the honesty of Cui's lyrics was like a clarion call. In May of 1986 at an important Beijing concert commemorating the Year of World Peace, he performed his latest composition, "Nothing To My Name." After the performance, a stunned audience erupted into a standing ovation. Soon he began working with Ado, a Beijing band with two renegade foreign embassy employees - a Hungarian bassist and a Madagascan guitarist. Later that year he released what he considered to be his first "real" album, Rock 'N' Roll On The New Long March. The album included the first recording of "Nothing To My Name" and became the best-selling album in China's history. Cui Jian has occupied a significant place in the Chinese music scene ever since.

Cui Jian also appears Saturday, May 3, 7:30 at South Hall, San Jose Convention Center. For ticket info, visit www.usastarimage.com

Chris Chafe is a composer/ cellist / music researcher with an interest in computer music composition and interactive performance. He has been a long-term denizen of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, Stanford University where he directs the center and teaches computer music courses. His doctorate in music composition was completed at Stanford in 1983 with prior degrees in music from the University of California at San Diego and Antioch College. Two yearlong research periods were spent at IRCAM, and the Banff Center for the Arts developing methods for computer sound synthesis based on physical models of musical instrument mechanics. A current project, "SoundWIRE", explores musical collaboration and network evaluation using high-speed internets for high-quality sound.

Cui Junzhi graduated from the Chinese Musical Instrument Department at the Conservatory of Music, having studied the konghou - the ancient Chinese harp. At the beginning of her career, it was challenge for her to explore and play this ancient instrument. Few people were interested in it, and it had become almost extinct as a performing instrument. Cui continued to study with senior musicians and seek out opportunities to learn more. Twenty years later, she has become the most well known proponent of the konghou in the world. Her international acclaim from performances worldwide has won her the title of "National Player" in China. In 1987, Cui was invited to perform at the World Harp Congress in Vienna, Austria, and this marked the first time that a konghou had been played at such a Congress. Western harpists were fascinated, and Cui was subsequently invited to perform at many other Congresses. Currently, Cui teaches the konghou at San Jose State University in California, the China Central Conservatory, and the China Music Conservatory. She also works as the Artistic Director of the Chinese International Double String Harp Association, Director of the Asia America Artist Association, and Musical Director of China Culture Development Association.

Hecheng Liu is a pipa virtuoso of remarkable talent. He began studying music when he was five. At the age of 11, he was accepted as a gifted student to the Junior Division of the Central Conservatory in Beijing. There he studied the pipa under the famous professor Li Guanghua. After graduating with honors in 1980, he entered the Conservatory College Program and spent the next four years studying under the nationally acclaimed professor Chen Zemin in the Department of Chinese Instruments at the Central Conservatory of Music. At the same time, he studied the guqin under the professor Li Xiangting. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree in 1984, and since then he has been teaching and performing both in China and abroad. As a soloist in the National Traditional Orchestra of China, Hecheng has performed all over the U.S., Europe, and Asia. He has won many competitions in pipa performance in China and abroad. He is often invited by universities, museums, and research institutes to lecture or perform. Hecheng was featured on the Beijing Radio Broadcasting station, one of the largest radio stations in China, in a show entitled "Liu Hecheng, pipa Performer."

Jin Xing ("Golden Star") is one of the world's most celebrated performers Ð she is a ballerina, a modern dancer and choreographer, and an actress. A controversial artist, she is also the first transsexual woman officially recognized by the Chinese government. Jin Xing was born male in 1967, and she joined the People's Liberation Army as a child so as to receive dance training. She quickly demonstrated incredible talent and was eventually promoted to the rank of colonel. In the late eighties, Jin received a scholarship to study modern dance in New York, where she worked with Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and José Limón. Next she traveled and performed around Europe, teaching dance in Rome from 1991 to 1993. Returning to China, she underwent several sex reassignment surgeries at age 28. Following Jin Xing's sex change, Chinese opera houses overflowed with crowds eager to see this unusual dancer, whom the Communist Party treated with uncharacteristic tolerance. In 1999 she established her Shanghai-based contemporary dance company, the Shanghai Jin Xing Dance Theatre, and it has performed to sold-out houses and critical acclaim throughout Europe and Asia. Her production of Shanghai Tango toured 20 cities in China, and she choreographed and performed a successful ballet version of Carmina Burana. A movie was made about her life story in 2004, titled Colonel Jin Xing: China's Most Emblematic Transsexual. She currently lives in Shanghai with her three adopted children and husband.

Jindong Cai joined the Stanford faculty in 2004 as the inaugural holder of the Gretchen B. Kimball Director of Orchestral Studies Chair. He is Music Director and Conductor of the Stanford Symphony and Philharmonia orchestras as well as the Stanford New Ensemble. Previously, Cai served on the faculties at Louisiana State University, the University of Arizona, the University of California at Berkeley, and the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati. He is frequently a guest conductor for orchestras across the world and he has won the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music three times. He is also the Artistic Director of the Stanford Pan-Asian Music Festival, which he founded in 2005. Under his leadership, the festival is gaining a nationwide reputation as an important showcase of music from contemporary Asia. Born in Beijing, Cai came to the United States for graduate studies at the New England Conservatory and the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati. In 1989, he was selected to study with famed conductor Leonard Bernstein at the Tanglewood Music Center, and he won the Conducting Fellowship Award at the Aspen Music Festival in 1990 and 1992. Together with his wife, Cai has co-authored several New York Times articles on the performing arts in China as well as a new book, Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese.

Ken Fields engaged in interdisciplinary studies across multiple departments (art, music, linguistics, computer and cognitive sciences), receiving a Doctorate in Media Arts from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2000. Continuing to pursue uncharted territory, Ken moved to China (2000-2008) to participate in the development of nascent digital arts/music programs at China's Central Conservatory of Music (Professor in the China Electronic Music Center, CEMC) and Peking University (Associate Professor in the School of Software, Department of Digital Art and Design). His domain of practice lies within the area of telematic arts - more specifically digital music - while theoretically focusing on issues related to ontology and the technology of inquiry. Ken is presently regional editor for the Journals of Organised Sound and ACM's Computers in Entertainment and a member of the international peer review panel for LABS: Leonardo Abstracts Service.

Andrew Jones is an associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1997. A member of the Chinese Program, his research interests include Modern and vernacular Chinese literature and popular culture, media culture and technology, the cultural history of the Republican period, cinema, music, children's literature, contemporary fiction, and the cultural history of the global 1960s. Jones is the author of Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age (Duke University Press, 2001), co-editor of a special issue of positions entitled The Afro-Asian Century, and translator of literary fiction by Yu Hua as well as Eileen Chang's Written on Water. Jones' book, Yellow Music, is an exploration of how early 20th century music critics derisively referred to the fusion of American jazz, Hollywood film music, and Chinese folk forms as "yellow" or "pornographic" music. Jones offers the first history of the emergence of Chinese popular music and urban media culture in the early 20th century as he analyzes global media cultures in the postcolonial world.

Lin Hsiu-Wei is the producer, choreographer, and artistic director of Tai-Gu Tale Dance Theatre. Lin graduated from the Chinese Cultural College in Taipei, Taiwan, with a degree in Dance Performance. She was a principal dancer in the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre from 1975 to 1985, where she received diverse professional dance training, including the ballet styles of Martha Graham and José Limón. In 1986, Lin was invited to participate in the American Dance Festival and to perform the solo dance Nu-Ua. In 1987 she received a Fulbright Scholarship and studied dance in New York. Lin strives not to be constrained by all her traditional, modern, and ballet training and techniques. She aims to go deep inside herself and create her own unique world of dance. Indeed, Tai-Ga Tale Dance Theatre was founded on the basis of the concept "spirit." Since 1986, Lin has also worked as the Producer and Administrative Director of Contemporary Legend Theatre, where she is responsible for repertoire management and choreography. So far, she has produced more than 13 productions, including an adaptation of Medea, and some of them have been invited to international theater festivals.

Sheldon Lu taught at the University of Pittsburgh for ten years before joining the University of California at Davis in 2002 as Professor of Comparative Literature. He was founding co-director of the Film Studies Program at UC Davis (2002-2004), and a Fulbright scholar in Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine (2004-2005). He is the author of From Historicity to Fictionality: The Chinese Poetics of Narrative (Stanford, 1994; Korean edition 2001), China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity (Stanford, 2001), Culture, Mirror-Image, Poetics (in Chinese, 2002), Chinese Modernity and Global Biopolitics: Studies in Literature and Visual Culture (University of Hawaii Press, 2007), editor of Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender (Hawaii, 1997) University of Hawaii Press bestseller, and co-editor of Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics (Hawaii, 2005). Winner of Choice's award of "Outstanding Academic Title of 2005."

Luo, Jing Jing is the second generation of composers from her family. She studied piano performance and composition at the Shanghai Conservatory where she received her B.A. She was chosen by the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation as a distinguished Asian music scholar and came to the US in the early 80's. She received her M.A. in composition at the New England Conservatory and received a Ph.D in composition from SUNY, Stony Brook of Stage University of New York.

Among her many honors are a recent Commissioning Award from the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, (2006), a joint fellowship from the Asian Council on the Arts, the New York State Art Foundation's Individual Artist Fellowship, and awards from the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Her works have been commissioned and performed by the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, Central Philharmonic of China, China Opera House Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Netherlands Dans Theatre, and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony. Her upcoming premieres are a Duo for Berlin Philharmonic principle flutist Emmanuel Pahud and cellist Emilia Baranowska, a large chamber ensemble and solo flute work for the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, and a piece for solo flute and percussion for Sean Gabriel. Luo has taught composition as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Oberlin Conservatory of Music and has lectured throughout the USA.

Luo is a self-taught visual artist of calligraphy and ink brush painting, and she studied under a few great Chinese pioneers in art. Her artwork has been exhibited at numerous art galleries.

Sheila Melvin writes and consults about culture and business in China. She is the author of The Little Red Book of China Business (2007) and the co-author of Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese (2004). Her writing on China has been published in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the Asian Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. Melvin's China-related business experience includes seven years at The United States-China Business Council, an association of major American corporations with significant investment in China. She worked in the Council's Washington, DC and Beijing offices and established its first office in Shanghai. She served as a liaison between officials of the American and Chinese governments, spoke at numerous international conferences, and was elected to the Board of Governors of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. After college, Melvin went to China and studied the language there. Her studies took her to Shanghai's Fudan University, where she was a student in the tumultuous spring of 1989. Melvin has an honors M.A. from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and was the recipient of the school's A. Doak Barnett Award for Excellence in China Studies.

The Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) is a large-scale, computer-mediated ensemble that explores cutting-edge technology in combination with conventional musical contexts - while radically transforming both. Founded in 2008 by director Ge Wang and students, faculty, and staff at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), this unique ensemble comprises more than 20 laptops, human performers, controllers, and custom multi-channel speaker arrays designed to provide each computer meta-instrument with its own identity and presence. The orchestra fuses a powerful sea of sound with the immediacy of human music-making, capturing the irreplaceable energy of a live ensemble performance as well as its sonic intimacy and grandeur. At the same time, it leverages the computer's precision, possibilities for new sounds, and potential for fantastical automation to provide a boundary-less sonic canvas on which to experiment with, create, and perform music.

Offstage, the ensemble serves as a one-of-a-kind environment and classroom that explores music, computer science, composition, and live performance in a unique and naturally interdisciplinary way. SLOrk uses the ChucK programming language as its primary software platform for sound synthesis/analysis, instrument design, performance, and education.

Dr. Catherine Swatek is an Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at The University of British Columbia. Her major research interests are centered around kunqu opera and Chinese vernacular literature of the Late Imperial Period, both fiction and drama. She earned both her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Chinese Literature from Columbia University, and she has written a number of books and articles on the subject of classical Chinese literature and drama. In 1992 she wrote a book on Tang Xianzu's epic operatic masterpiece The Peony Pavilion titled Peony Pavilion Onstage: Four Centuries in the Career of a Chinese Drama (University of Michigan Press). An expert of this text, having spent years reading the 55 scenes and 403 arias of the opera, she has familiarized herself extensively with the history and tradition of its performance in China.

Wang Fei is a guqin (also called qin) performer, educator, and scholar. She is the founder and director of the North American Guqin Association (NAGA), and a council member of the China Guqin Committee. She is one of the youngest members and examiners of the Qualifications Committee for the national guqin grading examination in China. Wang began her study of the instrument in 1985 under one of the great living masters, Professor Li Xiangting, at the Central Conservatory of Music in China. Not only is Wang one of the few scholars who have truly mastered the guqin and can bring its music to a wider audience through lectures and performances, she is also one of the few performers who still approach the guqin in the traditional way - as a scholarly art. She promotes this culture by organizing guqin-related events, such as conferences and yajis (elegant gatherings comparable to French Salons). In recognition of her achievements in cultural exchange between China and other countries, she was made an Honorary Citizen of the City of Baltimore in 1993 and a Daughter of the City of Maoka, Japan in 1995.

An innovative erhu master and music educator, Wang Guo-Tong learned his instrument under Chen Zhenauo and Jiang Fengzhi, disciples of the distinguished folk musician Liu Tianhua. He has been invited to give lectures and to perform in more than thirty countries and regions worldwide. Having collaborated with major orchestras around the world, he has also written hundreds of erhu compositions and practicing pieces and has over thirty recordings. Wang, in collaboration with Man Ruixing, has developed the square and round erhu, the low-register thick-stringed erhu, and the flat octagonal gaohu. For these three inventions he won the Technical Achievement Award from the Ministry of Culture in China. In recognition of his outstanding contribution to the art of erhu, he was awarded the title of "Outstanding Young Contributor at National Level" by the Chinese government in 1992. Having served as Head of the Department of Chinese Music at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (1992-2004), he is currently President of the Hong Kong Arts Centre, Director of Beijing's Wang Guo-Tong Erhu Arts Center, Visiting Professor at the Central Conservatory of Music, and Advisor for the Erhu Society under the Chinese Musicians' Association.

Ge Wang received his B.S. in Computer Science in 2000 from Duke University, PhD (soon!) in Computer Science (advisor Perry Cook) in 2008 from Princeton University, and is currently an Assistant Professor at Stanford University in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). His research interests include interactive software systems (of all sizes) for computer music, programming languages, sound synthesis and analysis, music information retrieval, new performance ensembles (e.g., laptop orchestra) and paradigms (e.g., live coding), visualization, interfaces for human-computer interaction, interactive audio over networks, and methodologies for education at the intersection of computer science and music.

Ge is the chief architect and co-creator of the ChucK audio programming language, and the Audicle environment. He was a founding developer and co-director of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), the founder and director of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk), a co-creator of the TAPESTREA sound design environment, and a lead developer of audio visualizations such as sndpeek. Ge composes and performs via various electro-acoustic and computer-mediated means, including with SLOrk and PLOrk, with Perry as a live coding duo, and with Princeton graduate student and comrade Rebecca Fiebrink in a duo exploring new performance paradigms, cool audio software, and great food.

Wanpeng Guo is a member of the China Musician Association and the Chinese National Orchestra Association. After studying the sheng, guanzi, and suona under the wind master Wu Zhongfu, he entered the China Central National Orchestra at age 18 as principal of the sheng section. In 1997 he received honors as a First Class Performer from the China's Department of Culture. Wanpeng was also a member of the Asia Orchestra Ensemble, which consisted of top-notch musicians from Japan, Korea, and China. During a 1997 U.S. tour with this orchestra, he performed with celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma at Carnegie Hall. In 2000, he was invited to perform with the Singapore Orchestra. He has performed in the U.S., France, Germany, Australia, Denmark, and most Asian countries, playing many solo programs. Since immigrating to the U.S. in 2001, Wanpeng has been active in various ensembles, including the Jumping Buddha Ensemble. Currently, he is one of the instrumental coaches and a conductor with the Chinese Music Program at Laney College in Oakland, California.

Wu Hsing-Kuo is currently the Artistic Director of Taiwan's Contemporary Legend Theatre. A versatile performing artist, Wu traverses the disciplines of traditional opera, dance, modern theatre, cinema, and television. After being admitted with honor to the Theater Department at the Chinese Culture University, he became a lead dancer in Taiwan's Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, whose modern dance productions toured internationally. In 1986, Wu and a group of friends founded the Contemporary Legend Theatre, which sought to revitalize traditional Chinese theatre by adapting Western classical plays to the styles and techniques of Peking opera. Here he was both leading actor and director of four Shakespeare plays, two Greek tragedies, four Chinese traditional pieces, and Beckett's Waiting for Godot. In 2002, Wu received a performance invitation from Gao Xinjian, the 2000 Nobel Laureate for Literature, to play the leading role in Gao Xinjian's August Snow. The play was a tremendous success at the Opéra de Marseille. In 2006 he performed in The First Emporer, which was also his debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera, and in 2007 he starred in the production The Butterfly Dream with renowned kunqu actress Qian Yi.

Despite his youthful age, violinist Chen Xi is frequently lauded for his technical excellence, gorgeous tone, musical imagination, passion and emotional maturity. Chen Xi has become one of the most promising and respected young artists of his generation in China.

In June, 2002, 17 year-old Chen participated the 12th International Tchaikovsky Violin Competition, one of the most prestigious music competitions in the world. Even after an unfortunate incident with his hands before the semi-finals, he continued to perform with passion and faultless technical precision. He won the Second-prize (no First-prize was awarded), making him the youngest top prizewinner in the history of the Tchaikovesky International Violin Competition.

Born October 1984 in China, Chen Xi's gift for music manifested itself at an early age. He held his debut recital at age twelve and began performing with top orchestras in China the following year. In 1995, he began his studies at the Central Conservatory of Music, China's leading music academy. In 2002, Chen Xi enrolled in the Curtis Institute of Music, studying under Mr. Joseph Silverstein, a well-known violinist, pedagogue and conductor. He graduated in 2007.

His international exposure continued in a series of four interviews courtesy of the NHK Broadcasting Corporation in Japan. Over the years, he has be invited to play at more than three hundred performances in China, Japan, Korea, Canada, Germany, Russia and USA including important national and international events.

Chen Xi is currently playing a 1708 "Ruby" Stradivarius violin, which is on loan to him from the Stradivarius Society, Chicago. Mr. Fushi, the president of the Society, praised him as "not only a very brilliant and talented musician, but also a one of the best people I have ever known."

The Xianghua Buddhist Ceremony group consists of five monks and four nuns from Meizhou, Guangdong Province in southern China. The Xianghua Buddhist tradition dates back to as far as the Tang and Song dynasty. It draws from Buddhist traditions and local culture and customs.

In Chinese, "Xiang" means incense and "Hua" means flower. When people visit temples, they bring offerings of both incense and flowers. Over time, the two words were combined to reflect a specific style of Buddhism practiced by the Hakka people in southern China. The ceremonies are usually performed in temples and in peoples' homes to honor religious holidays, marriages, births, deaths and other important events.

There are over thirty ceremonies that the group is able to present, and they can last from a couple of hours to several days. In Xianghua worship, the performers dress in traditional robes and costumes, and Buddhism is practiced through elements of music, dance and theatre. The ritual music emphasizes tune and rhythm and often uses drums, cymbals, and bells. Singing plays a major role and is performed throughout the rituals. The dancing sometimes involves the theatrical use of swords, and often the ceremonies borrow from local traditional operas and many are based on traditional Chinese myths and legends.

There are more than 200 temples in Meizhou area, and this particular group consists of the finest performers from the temples in the region. The music the group performs disappeared during the Cultural Revolution, but reviving the tradition has become a priority of the region during the past decade. An appearance at the Pan-Asian Music Festival on the Stanford campus will be the group's first-ever overseas performance and first trip to the United States. Through their performance, the Stanford community will be privileged to witness the religious rituals of people in southern China and understand the role that music plays in their faith.

From the age of ten, Qian Yi studied classical Chinese opera, kunqu, at the Shanghai Opera School and later joined the Shanghai Opera Company. The Chinese Ministry of Culture recognized her as one of the country's finest young kunqu actors. In 1998, Qian was cast in the lead role of Lincoln Center Festival's epic 19-hour production of The Peony Pavilion. The production toured internationally, playing at major international festivals in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia, and her performance was widely acclaimed by critics. In the U.S., she has starred in numerous re-workings of Chinese opera for a western theater context, including Ghost Lovers, The Orphan of Zhao, and Snow in June, She has also been exploring western theater, and in 2008, she will have her western opera premiere singing a leading role in the San Francisco Opera's production of Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter. In addition to film acting and playwriting, Qian still performs Chinese opera. Recently, she starred in the Contemporary Legend Theatre's The Butterfly Dream, which premiered at Taiwan's National Theater. She has taught Chinese opera movement at Barnard College and Columbia University and has given numerous lectures and demonstrations at universities and museums across the country.

Hongmei Yu is Erhu Soloist and Associate Professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China. She regularly appears as soloist with major Chinese orchestras, including the Chinese National Traditional Orchestra, the China Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hong Kong Chinese Traditional Orchestra, and the China National Symphony Orchestra. In addition, she has performed in major concert venues around the world, including Carnegie and Avery Fisher Halls in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Davis Symphony Hall in San Francisco, Symphony Orchestra Center in Chicago, the Beijing Concert Hall, the Hong Kong Cultural Center, the Salle Cortot in Paris, the Vienna Musikverein, the Sydney Opera House and most recently at Walt Disney Hall's Redcat Theater in Los Angeles. Recent awards include the China Golden Record Award for Best Solo Recording. She is the recipient of the Promusicis International Award in New York City. She is the first Chinese musician to win the coveted Indie Award (1999) in the category of Best Traditional World Music for the CD entitled String Glamour. Another solo CD, Red Plum Blossom Capriccio won the Best Chinese Musical Art Production in 1998.

Zhang Yu, a member of the China Musician Association and an examiner for the Chinese National Music Performing Examination Committee, graduated from China's Central Conservatory of Music. From 1986 to 1999, he was a suona soloist and a vice-chair of the treble suona section in the Chinese National Orchestra, one of the top orchestras in China. In 1987, he won First Place at The Fourth Goat City Music Invitational Competition. In 1989, he won Second Place at the National Instrumental Music Mountain City Cup TV Award Competition. Zhang has recorded a CD and has published a number of research papers. He has performed in Germany, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, and many countries in Asia.