After over two years of silence since she shot to fame overnight in 2000, Inner Mongolian pop singer Siqingerile is sweeping back again onto the music scene.
Her second album Seeking, to be released next month, aims to win over more fans with a brand-new look of a cool rock queen clad in body-hugging leather.
Besides her signature style of high-pitched singing, which made her stand out as unique among China's mainland pop singers, more colours and elements of rock'n'roll have been added to make her image more colorful and multi-faceted.
The talented singer composes and writes lyrics on most of the songs on the album.
She is said to be aiming at grabbing the title of "Asia's new rock'n'roll queen," since her agent, the Chai Tai Ice Music Production Ltd, has invited top producers from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and countries including Malaysia to help package her songs.
"I am pretty confident that I could develop myself and obtain that goal," said Siqingerile, in an exclusive interview with Beijing Weekend.
Siqingerile, a fairly long name, is proof that she was born in Inner Mongolia. She goes by her only given name, since Mongolians have but one, instead of a family name. The name itself has a beautiful meaning to it - light of wisdom.
She attributed her talents in music as a purely inherent thing, since she was born in an ethnic group known for singing and dancing. Yet she has spent over 30 years dazzling people with her talents in music.
"There is no person in our family that is found out of tune while singing," she said with pride.
Born of an ordinary family over 30 years ago in Xilinhot, a small town amid grasslands, she has enjoyed dancing and singing since she was quite young.
"I remember when my mom was ill, I danced and sang, until she said happily that her illness 'disappeared' after I did that," she recalled with an earnest smile.
Since she was 12, she went to the regional capital of Hohhot to study dancing in an arts school. Yet she found that she loved music more after she was recruited as a dancer in a local song and dance ensemble.
She began to teach herself how to play bass around 1989, as soon as she first heard about the rock'n'roll music sung and played by the Black Panther band.
"I felt thrilled by the sounds, and was startled to hear for the first time that guitar and bass could be played in such striking ways."
Intrigued by the bass, she learned and practised diligently. She kept hearing tapes of all types of rock music, and found herself to be blessed with a sharp pair of ears, able to pick out the bass among so many musical instruments in the recordings.
All her diligence paid off in 1990 when she began to play as the bass in the local Hawk band, which later changed its name to Knight.
Although she did not earn much playing in the band, even unable to buy her own bass, she still found that she loves music more than dancing, and began to channel all her energy into music.
In 2000, Chinese people suddenly noticed that there was a woman singer who played bass, danced on stage and sung in a sky-high voice of unbelievably soaring tones. She was then playing as a bass in famous rock singer Zang Tianshuo's band.
"My turning point seemed to suddenly come then, when Zang spotted me in the bar and invited me to play bass in his band in 1999," she admitted, showing her sincere gratitude for the master who helped her greatly on her road to stardom.
Yet she insists that her success has been solidly rooted in her talents and diligence.
"I have been working hard for decades before coming to this point," she said. First, she played bass with the infamous Knight band for years in bars in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province.
"We have earned a lot more in Shenzhen than in Inner Mongolia, but I found my work of playing become so machine-like that it started to drain my well of inspiration," she said.
She and her band went up north to Beijing, seeking to develop their creative rock'n'roll style, but they were so down and out that they found themselves jobless to feed themselves.
Because of living pressure, the band fell apart, only she insisted on her love for music.
"There were times when I felt down, not having a penny to live on, yet I did not feel regret over all the hardships," said Siqingerile, who earned a living by playing for various bands in bars in Beijing before she met Zang.
At last, fate smiled upon her. But she knows she has no time to rest on her laurels.
"I tend to be very natural and down-to-the-earth, gloomy sometimes, and I focused my mind only on how to improve in my next album."
Still single, Siqingerile, sighed on not having other women's joy to have a steady relationship and having a "man's shoulder to rest" her head on, but she firmly believes that music has brought her enough happiness to keep her moving along.
"Creating music has given me so much genuine happiness, as much as when I relaxed on the grasslands and looked at the stars in the sky," Siqingerile said. Now she's a star herself.
(Beijing Weekend August 25, 2003)
