Her limbs are too long, lips too thick, and manners insufficiently feminine, according to the standards of Shanghai beauty.

She is always in pants and often in hats. She speaks in a low voice, usually in the imperative mood. She looks people directly in the eyes. She appears brilliant and aggressive in the camera lens.

And when she sings, "you feel as if it was a black woman, and then as if not," said Wu Liang, a local art critic.

"She has the temperament of the heroine of 'Sunset Boulevard', with passion and a little hysteria," said Sawyer Lee, her mentor and producer.

But she is a 100 percent native of Shanghai - her grandfather was a first-generation Chinese white-collar employee in the 1940s, working as a bank clerk after graduating from St. John's College. And her parents' home is located in the very centre of the downtown area, to be included in the second phase of the Xintiandi development plan.

Shadow was the firstborn of her athletic parents. Her father, a basketball player, had expected a boy and treated the girl like one: pushing her into the pool to teach her swimming at three, and giving her a crew cut. "Neighbours in the lane used to call me the little Indian," she recalled.

Her mother, who loved movies, named the baby girl Zhang Ying. The girl chose "Shadow", a translation of "ying" as her stage name when she made music her life career.

Touched by music

"People say I am the best Jazz vocalist in China," said Shadow, "but Jazz doesn't have a set standard like opera. It relies much more on improvision."

Shadow has two bachelor's degrees from Shanghai International Studies University. In 1996, she went to the United States with Lee, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkely. Shadow worked as teaching assistant for Lee, doing some translation work and demonstrating Chinese folk songs.

Lee left a year later, but Shadow stayed.

It was the Christmas of 1996 when Shadow went to her first musical on Broadway. It was at the Gershwin Theatre and the play was "Show Boat", by Jerome Kern. She was so stunned by the performance that she stayed in the theatre until workers started to clean the place up. "I said to myself, I want to sing these songs, I want to be a musical performer."

Early next year, she bought the cheapest air ticket she could find to Chicago. "I couldn't afford to study in New York," she recalled. "It was too expensive."

After six hour's delay at the airport, she arrived early on a cold spring morning. "I knocked on the door of an acquaintance, asking her to let me stay one week's time," she said. "I promised I would move out by then, either with everything settled, or back to where I was from."

Two hours later she went to the street corner to buy a newspaper and started to contact schools and look for lodging and working opportunities.

"I found a school, had an audition and got accepted. I found a place to live and a roommate. I found a job." All within a week.

There she was, the only student of musicals from China at Roosevelt University.

"There were students from South Korea, Japan and Viet Nam," she said. "South Korea had an ambitious plan to promote musicals in the country. Fifty students were picked each year and sent to study musicals in different departments in the United States." But she had to rely on income gained from doing all kinds of odd jobs.

Vigorous performance

Four years later, after getting her licence for musical theatre performance, she knew instantly that there was no opportunity for her to work on Broadway. "There were few plays that had Chinese roles," said her mentor, Lee. "Wang Luoyong was very lucky, to be starring in Miss Saigon for many years, but when the play was no longer staged, he also became jobless."

Then after a call from Lee, Shadow decided it was time for her to return home.

She started to appear on stage in Shanghai last year, starring in her first musical play at the Hardhan Cafe Theatre, and the Asian premiere of "Vagina Monologues", a Tony Award Winning off-Broadway play in Shanghai's American Club.

She refused to perform in bars and cafes, insisting on having solo concerts, where she could sing to those who really wanted to hear. "My program usually includes four parts, episodes from Broadway musicals, Jazz repertoire, my original work, and some Shanghai oldies."

Besides studying musical performance, she had three years' training in Jazz vocals in Chicago. "In Chicago, you cannot get away from Jazz. So I took the course."

"People are used to take Jazz as background music for their drinking and chatting," she said. "It wears out the vigour of a performer. They want it to be soft soap and can't put up with anything powerful and striking."

"I believe, I am an intellectual from the very root," she said. "My family has taught me to insist upon what I think is right and beautiful, ignoring popular standards." Her grandfather, who became a maths teacher after 1949, used to teach her songs like "One Day When We Were Young" when the popular tunes were revolutionary odes and ballads.

"Recognition from professionals, those in the circle, is more important to me than becoming famous," she said. Her album of episodes from Broadway musicals will be released by the end of the month. It is the first time a Chinese singer has produced an album of Broadway music. "I can't expect it to sell very well, maybe tens of thousands, if things go well. But it is a milestone in Chinese musical history," said Lee.

Lee definitely has great ambitions for Shadow. "She has many talents. She is a good photo model, good actress, and she writes beautiful prose," Lee said. "Look at her healthy and international image. I believe she can sing the theme song for the Olympic Games in 2008. She has the power. She used to be an athlete herself."

(Shanghai Star December 23, 2002)