China’s first female conductor, Zheng Xiaoying, is 97 years old, but she continues to give outstanding performances to audiences.
In August, the nonagenarian conducted the Chinese-language version of the opera Carmen in Xiamen, in southeastern China’s Fujian province, where she lives. Tickets for the performance were like gold dust, and audiences marvelled, as always, at her elegant, expressive conducting.
Zheng has led a remarkable life. Born in Shanghai in 1929, she began studying piano at age six. During her university years, she switched to biology and medicine at the prestigious Peking Union Medical College Hospital. But at 19, she decided to flee to the liberated zone in search of “a new world she had never seen.”