Brought up in the latter years of the cultural revolution, when western music was seen as decadent, he remembers people prac tising with a blanket over the piano so the Red Guards wouldn't hear. But his father encouraged him to take up the violin when he was four. In 1980, aged 11, while studying at the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music, he was singled out by Yehudi Menuhin and taken to London for further studies. He now lives in San Francisco, returning to China only for occasional concerts.