Finding her voice

She was a grumpy kid stuck in an alien city when her parents first moved to China. Then she started singing Chinese folk songs, and the world changed for Annie Kathyn Lowdermilk, she tells Chen Nan.

The first time Annie Kathryn Lowdermilk performed at a Chinese TV singing competition, she almost passed out on the stage.

"I knew I was singing the wrong song, dressed in a wrong way and I even forgot to smile," she says of her 2009 effort.

The competition, called Hong Ge Hui, has all the singers performing Chinese patriotic songs. It was a lonely three-minute show and Lowdermilk, who was barely 20 years old then, vividly remembers her severe stage fright.

She could have left the stage behind, gone back to the United States and gotten a regular day job. However, Lowdermilk, who had lived in China as a child, was determined to become a singer of Chinese songs.

Four years later, Lowdermilk stepped onto the stage of Starlight Boulevard, a popular CCTV variety show. After competitions on TV intermittently for a year, she was recently awarded the Best Foreign Singer of the Year at a ceremony of the show's 10th anniversary.

Sitting in a cafe near Communication University of China, where she studied animation, the 24-year-old performer known as Tang Bohu in China, says that she wants people to see her like "any Chinese singer".

Born in Demark, she moved to the US with her family at the age of 7, and then came to China in 2010 with her parents who were both English teachers, when she was 10.

"I grew up here. When I first came here, there were only two subway lines. That one was still under construction," she says, pointing to a roaring Batong line train outside. Despite her typical Caucasian look - fair skin, deep-set eyes and high-bridged nose, Lowdermilk has the aura of a young Chinese woman, with her dark hair and her quiet, humble personality.

Her favorite food is also typical Chinese: malatang, which has various raw ingredients cooked in a communal pot blended with spices, a dish that originated from Chongqing and the surrounding Sichuan province.

As the youngest of 11 children in her family, Lowdermilk was a naughty imp, always trying to get attention from other family members.

"I was pushed down a lot. My parents didn't think I was a princess. They thought I was basically not very intelligent," she says. "My brothers are very smart. They have all kinds of artistic talents. They just could do everything and I couldn't. Nothing really clicked with me."

She was lonely during the first three or four years in Beijing, since she lost all her friends in the US and couldn't adjust to her new life. The 10-year-old girl was angry with her parents and she didn't understand the city life around her.

That suddenly changed when she started teaching herself how to sing Chinese folk songs in 2009.

One day, she was practicing a folk song from Shaanxi province in northwestern China. She sang it with the high pitch and dialect for hours at home. When she turned around, her mother was standing there.

"Is that you singing or from the recording?" her mother asked.

"No, it was me," she replied.

"You sound exactly like a Chinese. How did you do that? That's amazing!" her mother said in admiration.

"That was the first time I remember my mother ever praised me to my face," she says. "I was very happy. I finally found what I am supposed to do. Since then I would learn any Chinese song I heard and work hard on my Chinese pronunciation."

Though she still hadn't overcome the stage fright she felt in 2009, she decided in 2013 to audition again, this time for Starlight Boulevard, the first singing competition variety show created in the country 10 years ago.

She spent many sleepless nights thinking about her clothes, makeup and songs during the competition. She also stopped eating for several days to fit into her dress. She insists on performing old Chinese folk songs with the original tunes and styles, rather than adding any modern elements, like rap and rock.

"I know lots of artists modernize old music. For me, I don't want to change it at all. I want it to be pure," she says.

One of her favorite Chinese films is Farewell My Concubine, an award-winning movie directed by Chen Kaige in 1993. Running through the film are Peking Opera melodies that entranced worldwide audiences, including Lowdermilk.

"People have been training for years to perform these kinds of art onstage. Lots of Westerners come to China and think it's just about singing in a high voice and having facial expression, which is completely wrong," she says. "Every little movement has a meaning, even the way they paint their faces. We should take it seriously."

Now, Lowdermilk also acts in a TV serial and her goal is to produce her own music in a soft rock style and work with young Chinese musicians.

"I never planned to be a singer. But after what I have been through, I realized that it's OK to dream," she says.

Contact the writer at chennan@chinadaily.com.cn