Kaiser Kuo

QUICK FACTS

• born in New York
• graduate of U.C. Berkeley and University of Arizona
• was a part of the band Tang Dynasty from 1988-1999
• currently in the band Spring and Autumn and AC/DC tribute band, The Dirty Deeds
• has written for the Red Herring and has a column in the The Beijinger
• was director of digital strategy for Oglivy China
• is now Baidu's director of international communications
• lives in Beijing with his wife Fanfan and two kids

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Hotties.

Kaiser Kuo (Guo Yiguang) was born in 1966 in New York to immigrant parents and grew up listening to the Who, Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel, Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and others that would totally influence his life as a musician and writer.

Coco Lee

QUICK FACTS

• born in Hong Kong
• family lived in San Fransisco for a while
• while visiting Hong Kong with her sisters at the age of 17, she sang a Whitney Houston song at a talent contest hosted by Hong Kong channel TVB and received an offer
• has since released too many albums to count, including Coco Lee (1996) and Exposed (2005) (English)
• sang the Mandarin versions of "Colors of the Wind" and "Reflection" and did the Mandarin dub for Disney's Mulan (1998)
• has done duets with Jacky Cheung, Van Ness Wu, and non-Chinese singers including Kelly Price and Julio Iglesias
• was friends with Michael Jackson
• performed at the 73rd Academy Awards
• sang a song for the Beijing Olympics, "Forever Friends"
• is a YouthAIDS Ambasssador in Thailand
• married to president of trading group Li & Fung, Canadian Bruce Philip Rockowitz
• recently projects include a song for the Shanghai Expo and the second leg of her East2West World Tour

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Coco Lee has had a remarkable number of firsts as an Asian pop singer in the international music scene. A whole ten years after her crossover debut, she has been listed by E! Entertainment as one of the world's 25 sexiest divas ahead of Fergie, Madonna, and J. Lo.

Baccarat Hong Kong, June 2009

While she spent her younger years in Hong Kong, at age ten, she and her two older sisters relocated to the US with their mother, who was going to med school in California.
Young Coco totally loved listening to Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. It was after high school that she returned to Hong Kong and entered the talent contest through which she was discovered.

Eileen Chang

QUICK FACTS

• born in Shanghai
• wrote for the United States Information Agency in the early 50s
• relocated permanently to the US when she was 35
• was a writer-in-residence at University of Southern California, Radcliffe College, and UC Berkeley
• has had many of her novels made into films, including Lust, Caution directed by Ang Lee (2007)
• is one of Greater China's most popular and influential writers into today

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Eileen Chang was born to upper-class parents in Shanghai in the year 1920. Her father had affairs, got hooked on opium, and was very violent, and they divorced when Eileen was ten. So her childhood was very tumultuous and sad. She was able to have an English education beginning at a young age and attended a Christian high school in the city. She was already writing prolifically as an undergraduate in literature at the University of Hong Kong, where she studied until Japan took over.

Daniel Wu

QUICK FACTS

• born in Berkeley, California
• parents immigrated from Shanghai and met in the US
• has been a student of kungfu since age 5
• studied architecture at University of Ohio
• upon friends'/sisters' suggestion began modeling, thus beginning his career in Asia
• first movie role was in an HK gay romance Bishonen alongside Stephen Fung and Shu Qi in 1998
• has since starred in more than 40 movies
• is signed onto Jackie Chan's company
• has been nominated for the Golden Horse and Hong Kong Film Awards
• won best new director at Hong Kong Film Awards for his mockumentary The Heavenly Kings
• has homes in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Beijing
• married to VJ and model Lisa Selesner

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"Shanghai is my hometown."

"When I'm in the United States, they do not think of me as an American. In Hong Kong, Hong Kong people do not feel that I am Chinese. So I would always tell myself, I am a citizen of the world"

-- Daniel Wu, Shanghai Times interview



Young Daniel Wu trained in kungfu as his Shanghainese parents reminded him to never forget that he was Chinese. After graduating from college, he went backpacking in Asia to feel connected to his roots. Then he became a model in Hong Kong:


Note: This is actually a 2009 Men's Vogue cover and not from his early modeling days.

And now, he lives in China making his career as an actor, a director, and--more recently--as a producer.

Yo-Yo Ma

QUICK FACTS

• born in Paris
• moved to New York when he was 5
• graduated from Juilliard School of Music and Harvard
• has honorary doctorates in music at both Harvard and Princeton
• has made over 80 albums and won 17 Grammy Awards, including a Latin Grammy, along with many prestigious music awards including the National Medal of the Arts
• has played on movie soundtracks including that of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000) and Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
• performed on the site of the WTC in 2001 and at the Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002
• has performed for Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy (1962), and Obama (2009)
• created the Silk Road Project in 1998 to put into cultural exchange musicians from various countries
• USDS CultureConnect Ambassador since 2002
• UN Ambassador of Peace since 2006
• on the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities since 2009

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Yo-Yo Ma was surrounded by music from a young age: his father was a music professor and his mother a mezzo-soprano singer. They had both immigrated from Mainland China and met in France, living there through WWII and later settling in New York City in 1961.

Ma was homeschooled by his parents. As a toddler he wasn't feelin' the violin and promised his parents to stick with the cello at about age six, and by the age of eight had already played at the White House for President JFK and debuted in Carnegie Hall along with his sister (on piano).

Bruce Lee

QUICK FACTS

• born in San Francisco
• went to Seattle Central Community College and University of Washington
• founded his own martial arts schools
• established his own form of martial arts and philosophy called Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do
• trained students such as Joe Lewis and Chuck Norris
• did 32 movies, including Fists of Fury and Way of the Dragon (1972)
• could throw grains of rice into the air and catch them using chopsticks
• is totally world-famous and a pop culture icon
• in Time Magazine's "100 Most Important People of the Century"

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baby Bruce with his parents

Bruce Lee was born in 1940 in San Francisco. His parents moved back to Hong Kong when he was a baby and were stuck there during the Japanese occupation. They sent Bruce back to the United States when he was 18 to escape the dangerous environment of HK in the 40s and 50s (he was getting into a lot of street fights) and to go for his higher education.

"All types of knowledge ultimately mean self-knowledge."
-- Bruce Lee, Pierre Berton interview (1971)