Siqingerile captures her struggle for success in memoir

Rock star Siqingerile releases her autobiography How Far Is My Dream from You. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Siqingerile, an ethnic Mongolian rock star, recently released her autobiography How Far Is My Dream from You, sharing the bittersweet journey of pursuing her music dream for more than 25 years.

"There were a lot of people asking, 'Where did this girl come from?' when I first got under the spotlight," says Siqingerile, who became famous overnight in 1999 through her performance on the opening ceremony of the Guangxi Folk Songs Festival.

She was singing a remixed version of the Folk Songs Like the Spring River, a classic Guangxi folk song about a local legend. She added elements of rock 'n' roll, and her signature style of high-pitched singing proved to be a great success.

"I want to answer the question by telling what my life was like before I got famous, so that people will know that I did not come out of nowhere," Siqingerile said during the book launch in Beijing in April.

The book starts with her childhood memories to the initial years of her career in Shenzhen and Beijing, and ends with her becoming established by the early 2000s.

Born in 1968 in Xilinhot, a county-level city in the Inner Mongolian autonomous region, Siqingerile is the third daughter of her family. She went to the regional capital of Hohhot to study dancing in an arts school.

Siqingerile received five years of professional training in dancing and after graduation she joined a local song-and-dance ensemble as a dancer.

However, she gradually found that her passion was music and started to teach herself how to play bass in 1989.

"Music and dance are linked. I got exposed to a lot of music when I danced, and found myself more in love with music than dancing."