* Admin's Choice!!

Jane LiangYing Zhang  (born 1984 October 11) is a Chinese singer.

She held the third place in Super Girl 2005 female singing competition in People's Republic of China. She is best known for her singing ability in English, Spanish, Cantonese and other languages besides Mandarin Chinese. She is regarded by some critics to be one of the top-level foreign language singers in China. Some critics further commented that she sings with her soul.

Humble Beginnings

Liangying Zhang was born in a modest family in Chengdu, Sichuan province. She has developed a natural talent in singing and stage performance at a very young age. She had performed at her parents' work place several times. Her parents were divorced when she was 13. Two years later, her father died and worsening family economic situations forced her to work outside of school. She starts to sing at a local PUB, where her uncle plays music instruments. She fell in love with music of Western singers such as Mariah Carey and Christina Aguilera as well as American country music at the same time. Unable to afford buying music equipments, she frequently borrowed walkman and headphones from her class mates and skipped lunches to save enough for buying cassettes. Several years later, she started to gather attention from listeners and gained a small group of followers.

Super Voice Girl Competition

Video Sample :

• Jane Zhang - Loving You (One of her best performance. She hits an F6 and G6)
• Jane Zhang - Don't Cry For Me Argentina

She entered the local Chengdu competition for Super Voice Girl and won the local final competition and entered the final competition with Li Yuchun and Hejie. She is known for singing her favorite songs, especially foreign language songs. Her style attracted wide supports from the educated and college students heavily influenced by the West. At the same time, her performance irritated several critics and received negative reviews from them. Her fans, outraged by the criticism, launched online protests and eventually forced two critics to resign from the board of review. During the final competition, she sang "Reflection", "I still believe", "What's up", "Beautiful", and "Don't cry for me Argentina". Her outstanding performance in foreign language music lead some commentators to suggest that she sing at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Although she gathered positive reviews from some critics and professional musicians, she is not the most popular amongst young supporters of the TV program. Her final number of votes (1.3 million) by messaging fell behind Li Yuchun and Zhou Bi Chang, placing her in the 3rd place.

Performances in Super Voice Girl Competition

Influence

• Although many of her followers could not comprehend the lyrics of her songs, she sparked language learning interests among her fans and appreciation of Western music.
• Her fans called themselves "Liang Fen", the combination of the pronunciation of her name and the English word "fan". The same term has been used to define a particular type of snack in central China.

Music Awards Received

• 1998 Second Place in Chengdu Ailang Singing Contest
• 2004 First Place in Tongyi Ice Tea National College students singing contest
• 2004 First Place in Jingdu PUB singer contest
• 2005 Third Place in Super Voice Girl National Competition

External links

• Jane Zhang her official web site
• Jane's board in newsmthbbs [2]