Zhang Jing'an

Zhang Jing'an was born in Macheng, Hubei, in 1925. He entered the music department of Hubei Normal College in 1945, graduated in 1949, worked as a troupe director and choral and orchestral conductor, and then turned to composition full time, later leading the creative group and then the Hubei Opera Troupe. Making repeated field trips to the Honghu Lake area, he drew on Tianmian huagu opera and folk songs of the Xiang River region to compose, with Ouyang Qianshu, the opera Red Guards of Honghu Lake (1959), which he also co-wrote; its arias such as Honghu Waters, Waves upon Waves became widely known, and the film version's score won a Hundred Flowers Award in 1961. He died in Wuhan in December 2003.