Late bloomer, and how

Huang's concert in Beijing features Chinese soprano Yu Lina.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Huang was born in a village of Huadian county in Northeast China's Jilin province. His father worked at a State-owned oil shale company and his mother was a nurse. His life seemed completely detached from music until he turned 15, when Huang visited his father in a hospital in the neighboring Liaoning province.

Later, his mother gave him 10 yuan ($1.52) for undertaking that journey alone. He used the money to buy an erhu. Huang then joined a local students performing arts group and learned to play the violin and banhu, another Chinese instrument, from a musician of his county.

During the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), even as Huang and his group members had to work on rural farmlands, they continued to play their music.

The resumption of the college entrance examination, among other things in China in 1978, changed Huang's fate as he made it to China University of Mining and Technology.

Going further, he landed at University of Wisconsin-Madison to earn his master's and doctoral degrees in civil engineering and started a new life in the United States in 1984.

Huang lost touch with music in college days.

Having established his own company, Huang sent his two sons to learn the violin in 1996, something he could not do in his younger days.

"Cultural identity is a big issue. Some of my friends force themselves to watch American football so they can have something to talk about with Americans," Huang says. "But I told my sons, 'You cannot please everybody.'"

He has encouraged his children to be proud of the family's Chinese origin, he says.