Early Years
Zhou Bichang was born on July 26, 1985 in Changsha, Hunan Province, to Zhou Zhongzhan, a government employee at the time, and Lu Yuanyuan, a teacher in Chinese folk music. When she was six, her family moved to Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, a special economic zone, or SEZ, on the southeast coast of China in close vicinity of Hong Kong. In Shenzhen she attended Yuanling Elementary School, followed by a period at Gangxia Elementary School, before eventually transferring to Fuhua Elementary School where her mother held a teaching position. Then she spent six years attending Futian High School in Shenzhen.
Zhou has been brought up in a family where music permeates everyday life. Her mother, being a music teacher and singer herself, is an avid fan of Chinese folk music. When Zhou was a child, her grandmother taught her to play the piano.
While Zhou was in junior high school, pop music from the adjacent Hong Kong and Taiwan was ubiquitous in Shenzhen, a far cry from the music her mother's generation was accustomed and attracted to. Zhou started collecting music CDs and listening to them non-stop. Soon in high school, she started to become known for her vocal talent and her ability to imitate the style of several popular R&B and Pop singers.
In her late senior high school years, as her interest in music escalated she was determined to pursue a career in music later in her life. In 2002, with an enviably high score of 681 on the College Entrance Exam she was admitted into the four-year undergraduate program in non-classical music at the prestigious Xinghai Conservatory of Music in Guangzhou, named after the late famous musician Xian Xinghai.
In March 2002, Zhou released a single named "How I Miss You" on the web, which received limited popularity. During the period of 2001 to 2003, she had entered herself into a variety of youth singing contests and had won a few awards. But before long she grew tired of competing in singing contests and despondent about her prospects in the music industry as she came to realize that her musical style as well as her look – hip hop and tomboyish – was too unconventional for the industry where bubble-gum sweet-faced girl pop idols were prevalent. She then retreated to college life until an accidental entry on her part into the 2005 Super Girl's Voice Contest that later in the year swept the whole nation.
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