Cui Jian
Cui Jian grew up in a musical family in Beijing—his father was ethnic Korean and a professional trumpet player and his mother was a member of a Korean dance troupe. Cui Jian followed his father to start playing the trumpet at the age of fourteen and joined the Beijing Symphony Orchestra in 1981, at the age of twenty. He was first introduced to rock during this period when friends smuggled in illicit recordings from Hong Kong and Bangkok. Inspired by the likes of Simon and Garfunkel and John Denver, Cui began learning to play the guitar.