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Ai Jing

Ai Jing
艾敬
A long-haired East Asian woman in a black dress
Ai Jing in 2007
Background information
Born (1969-09-10) September 10, 1969 (age 47)
Origin People's Republic of China
Genres Rock, pop
Instruments Singing, guitar
Years active 1992–present
Website www.aijing.com

Ai Jing (Chinese: 艾敬; pinyin: Ài Jìng; born 10 September 1969 in Shenyang, Liaoning) is a mainland Chinese singer and painter. China's Northeast News called her "China's most talented female folk rock singer."

Ai was born into a musical family: her father played several instruments, and her mother was a Pingju singer. She attended the Shenyang Special School of Art, joined the Oriental Song and Dance Troupe (Chinese: ; pinyin: dōngfāng gēwǔ tuán) in Beijing at age 18, and first gained widespread attention with her 1992 song "My 1997" (Chinese: 我的1997; pinyin: wǒde yījiǔjiǔqī). A semi-autobiographical ballad that has been compared to Cui Jian's "Nothing to My Name" in terms of its social impact, the song tells about her love for a man living in Hong Kong, and how she eagerly awaits the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China so she can visit him. After "My 1997", she performed throughout East and Southeast Asia for several years. The music video for her 1993 "Wandering Swallow" (Chinese: 流浪的燕子; pinyin: liúlàng de yànzi) won the Chunlan Cup MTV Convention.

Nimrod Baranovitch describes Ai as one of China's first "independent, free, active, dynamic, perhaps even rebellious" female pop stars". She is also known for having written and produced much of her own music, in a time when few Chinese artists were doing so. Much of her music defied stylistic rules and incorporated Western folk and rock styles. But after her early albums, Baranovitch claims, Ai's popularity decreased as her themes became more "personal and nonconformist", and she faced "antagonism" from men within the music industry because she did not sexually objectify herself and because her introduction of new musical styles challenged the male-dominated industry.


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Wikipedia

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