Bathed in dreamy stage lighting, she mesmerized the audience with her ethnic vocal style and the powerful yet graceful movements of her drum dance.

Born in Hunan province to a father of the Tujia ethnic group and Miao mother, the singer rose to fame after performing the dance song Goodbye, Carmen at the 2005 CCTV Spring Festival Gala. Signed by a major Chinese record label, she released several pop albums and became a sought-after commercial star.

Yet, beneath the glamour, she grappled with creative burnout and a hollowed-out existence from relentless work demands.

From 2012 to 2016, she stepped away from the spotlight, retreating to remote villages in Hunan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces — homelands of the Miao and Tujia people.

"I lived entirely as a farmer during those years — rising with the sun, tending flowers and vegetables," she says.

This tranquil rural life rekindled her creativity and sensitivity to beauty.

She began documenting folk songs and dance traditions, and in Baojing county of Hunan's Xiangxi Tujia and Miao autonomous prefecture, she apprenticed under 89-year-old master Hong Fuqiang to learn miaogu, a percussion art of the Miao ethnic group. It was there she formally became a Miao drum dance inheritor, paving the way for her artistic rebirth.