Wilber Pan

QUICK FACTS

• born in West Virginia
• moved to Taiwan when he was 7
• went to Taipei International School and then California State Polytechnic University to study mass communications
• entered a singing contest in 2000 and got attention from Andy Lau's manager
• began his career as a a Taiwan Channel V host and actor
• has of 2009 made a total of 10 albums, the latest being 007 (2009)
  
• did the voice of Po in the Mandarin version of Kung Fu Panda!
• latest dramas are Endless Love (2010) and Pandamen by Jay Chou
• known as Pan Weibo by his Chinese fans

--------------------------------------------------

When he was young, Wilber Pan wanted to be a basketball player. His parents had run a grocery store while they were living in the U.S., then moved back to Taiwan in 1987, where Will started studying bopomofo and Chinese while attending Taipei International School. There, he began to participate in school plays and found that he really enjoyed performing.

Back in the States for college, Will tried out some singing contests but didn't really have any success. One of them, however, was hosted by Sony BMG in Los Angeles, and while he didn't place in the finals, that was where Andy Lau's manager discovered him.

Leehom Wang

QUICK FACTS

• born in Rochester, NY
• parents immigrated to NY from Taiwan
• attended Williams College and Berklee School of Music
• received a recording contract after entering a talent contest in Taiwan while visiting his grandma in 1995
• has since made 13 albums + one Japanese album
• was one of the torchbearers for the Beijing Olymic Games and performed at the closing ceremony
• began his acting career in a Hong Kong action movie and has since worked with Ang Lee and Jackie Chan
• latest projects are his directorial debut Love in Disguise and a new album, The Eighteen Martial Arts

------------------------------------------

Leehom is everywhere in Greater China!





Visiting China since 2001, I'd always wondered why this one person was on every bottle of Wahaha mineral water. I just couldn't understand who would want to be Wahaha's human mascot and assumed that he was either a Taiwanese drama heartthrob or a popstar.

It turns out that Wahaha, the hugest Chinese water & beverages company of all time, was looking for a new young singer's face to represent them, and at the time, Leehom already had a solid fanbase in Taiwan and was looking to expand his audience to Mainland China.

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

----------------------------------------

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

-------------------------

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.

MC Jin

QUICK FACTS

• born in Miami
• became famous for rap battling on Black Entertainment Television's Freestyle Fridays
• has made mixtapes and 4 albums, including his debut The Rest is History (2004) and ABC (3007)
• acted in the movie 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)
• has done songs with Kanye West, Wyclef Jean, and Leehom Wang
• featured in the documentary 1040 (2010) along with Van Ness Wu
• will play Bruce Lee's BFF in Bruce Lee, My Brother (2010)
• currently living in Hong Kong

-------------------------------------------

Jin grew up in a neighborhood of Miami with a large African-American population and early on began to have an interest in hip-hop and rap. His parents were alarmed and ashamed that their son was like a black kid.

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

----------------------------



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).

Van Ness Wu

QUICK FACTS

• born in Santa Monica, California
• starred in Meteor Garden (2001) and was a member of F4
• dramas include Peach Girl (2002) and Autumn Concerto (2009)
• has made 6 albums including V.Dubb (2007), and the latest, Reflections (2010)
• did a collaborative album with Korean star Kangta, Scandal (2006)
• has been an entrepreneur with clothing, shoes, a record company, and a nightclub
• is also a producer and director
• featured in the documentary 1040 (2010) about Christianity in Asia

----------------------------------------------------




Van Ness grew up in Los Angeles. He had a job as a telemarketer before he decided to go to Taipei "with a pocket full of dreams" and was chosen to be in the original mega-hit drama Meteor Garden, playing Mei Zuo, one of the boys of the "Flower Four" or F4. And so his acting-singing career began. F4 turned into a super boyband that had hundreds of millions of girls totally in love across East Asia.




Now, he is a solo artist who dedicates his life to God.