I somehow hadn’t come across Zhang Xin (张芯) before, and what a voice.
Zhang Xin / 张芯, also credited as Melanie Zhang) was born August 10, 1980, in Tianjin, although her family is from Beijing. She is Han Chinese. The Tianjin detail is a little accidental: her grandfather worked for the Tianjin Railway Bureau, so her parents arranged for her to be born there and she lived there until about age two and a half.
More importantly for that voice you’ll hear here, she started learning to sing at four. Her father encouraged her toward a singing career and took her to competitions when she was young. Chinese biographical sources also say she went to the United States multiple times to study different kinds of music.
And she was already formidable very young: in 1997, at about 17, she won first prize in both the Beijing division and national final of the Feitu Cup National Young Singers Competition. In 1999 she won silver in both the Chinese and Asian sections of the Shanghai Asian Music Festival newcomer competition; in 2000 she received an excellence award at CCTV’s national young-singer competition; and in 2002 she won the popular-vocal category of a Beijing singing competition before placing third overall.
She then became quite a substantial TV soundtrack singer before Singer 2019: she sang 《问世间》 for the 2006 The Return of the Condor Heroes, 《高原之歌》 for Visitors on the Icy Mountain, and songs for The Deer and the Cauldron, The Thirteen Princesses and others. In 2007 she finished second in the annual final of CCTV’s Avenue of Stars.
Now about this song…
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This is her performing 《可汗山》 (Kèhán Shān / “Khan Mountain”) on Singer 2019. She was one of the original singers competing that season, and this performance immediately sent me looking for more.
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That voice is HUGE — powerful, resonant, and seemingly effortless when she opens it up.
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