Publisher's Synopsis
" 'I want to express the suffering of contemporary people, and the evil of their oppressors.' Once he made that statement to me during our first interview in Beijing on November 10, 2012, I knew in my heart that I would need to do something to make Wang Xilin and his music more well-known throughout the world. Described by one German music critic as one of the most original voices in China, his story is a compelling one that shows his own personal struggles, as an ordinary person of modest means, against oppressive ruling powers: Coming from a poor family background, Wang could not study the music that he wanted to due to government restrictions, was unjustly treated for fourteen years during the Cultural Revolution, and could not find his truly distinctive voice as a composer until he was more than half a century old, after the Chinese government allowed people to have exposure to the music of twentieth-century European composers such
