The Girl on Fire

The first guitarist in China to enter a music school after the Cultural Revolution, when western music was banned, Xuefei Yang is stunning the gifts

By Zabrina Lo

Internationally celebrated Chinese classical guitarists like Xuefei Yang are rare, as western music was banned during China’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. “The guitar was associated with pop music, the Beatles, the image of having long hair and hooligans, and jeans were seen as a symbol of capitalism,” Yang says. “For a communist country, it’s not a very nice image.” But, as she was born in Beijing after the Cultural Revolution, Yang had the opportunity to take up the instrument as a hobby. When she was ten, her parents took her to Zhuhai’s first Guitar Festival, where she was the only junior contestant. Yang went on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music and become the first guitar student to graduate in the mainland. She has since…

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Tatler Hong Kong (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 2022

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