AsiaWeek, July 4, 1997

WITH HIS SHOULDER-LENGTH HAIR and trademark black jeans, 28-year-old Zheng Jun looks like any other Chinese wanna-be musician. But there's one sizeable difference. Not all aspiring rock stars strike paydirt the way he has especially in China. Zheng's new CD, The Third Eye, has gone gold in just six months. Does this new musical star want to change the world? Not really. He says: "I honestly don't care much about the state of society or the future." And that, he says, is the way his fans feel. The real ear-turner in Zheng's music is his use of traditional instruments and minority voices. The Chinese zither, ancient flutes and vocalists from Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Yunnan all weave their way into his musical fabric. The best example of this is a song called Return to Lhasa, in which the voice of a Tibetan soloist towers above the mix of guitars and drums. For Zheng, who has listened to ethnic music since childhood, performing pop is something of a musical after-thought. "I didn't hear rock music until I was

over 20," he says. "So ethnic music is very important to me. Its influence is enormous."