Striking a chord without compromise

Photo provided to China Daily

After changing a few coaches in two years, Li finally studied under Dan Zhaoyi, professor with Sichuan Conservatory in Chengdu and started a hard "life of two cities".

Every Friday night, his mother accompanied him by train from Chongqing to Chengdu, arriving at the Sichuan Conservatory in the early morning. After two days of intensive practicing, they took the train back home on Sunday night.

While other boys were playing outside, Li kept playing the piano at home with his "tiger mother" sitting beside him. Life was regular and boring. His classmates hated homework, but he was curious about it.

Sometimes, he complained, "I don't want to play any more", but most of the time he enjoyed playing the piano.

He wrote in his diary, "I enjoy playing so much that sometimes I do not stop, even past the required time. Do you know why? Because I want to be a pianist when I grow up."

"What is a pianist? I actually had no idea at that time. I just vaguely wanted to play good piano," says Li, who did not attend any real concert until he was 12 and went to New York for a competition in 1994.

"I was so excited to attend a live concert, to listen to those musicians whom I used to listen to on records," he says.

In 1995, professor Dan moved to Shenzhen to found his own art school. After a serious family meeting, Li's mother quit her job to take him to follow Dan. Li recalls that his grandparents did not want him to quit normal school. They wanted him to grow up on the same track as other children and thought it was a risk to be a professional pianist.

"But I just enjoyed playing the piano and the feeling of being appreciated by the audience," says Li.

As the frontier city of China's reform and opening-up, Shenzhen was new and full of immigrants in the mid-1990s. Li felt uncomfortable, because most people around him spoke Cantonese and he could not understand them. He was dressed differently from others and what's more, he was the best player in the school, which attracted envy and even hostility.

"But it's OK. I have the piano, that is enough," he told himself. He was learning to be an artist, concentrating on his music, immersed in his own quiet life and didn't care about anything else.

In October 2000, the 18-year-old Li went to Warsaw for the Chopin International Piano Competition. The prestigious competition takes place once every five years and competitors are of a high standard.

He spent one month in Warsaw to prepare and participate in the competition, devoting all his time to practicing and performing, allowing himself only one luxury - going out for a meal at KFC to celebrate his 18th birthday.

When it was announced that he had become the youngest to win the award, the only thing he felt at that moment was exhaustion. "Finally, it is finished," he said.

The unambitious young man had no idea that everything had only just begun.

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