Lu Chunling

Also known as Called the Flute King

Lu Chunling was born in Shanghai in 1921. He learned the flute at seven from an old leather worker and was playing on Shanghai radio by thirteen. He worked at the Jiangnan Shipyard and as a taxi driver while studying Jiangnan sizhu in his spare time, helped found a Chinese music ensemble in 1940, and later helped set up the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra. From 1954 he taught part-time at the Shanghai Conservatory, becoming a professor in 1976. His compositions include Then and Now, Good News and Spring in Jiangnan, and his arrangement of Partridges in Flight won the first China Golden Disc award in 1989. He headed the Shanghai Jiangnan Sizhu Society and died in Shanghai in May 2018.