With romantic comedy “Go Away Mr. Tumor” breaking China’s box-office records in August, the film’s music producer now sets her eyes on the Grammy Awards.
In an interview with Chinese news portal Women of China posted on Tuesday, independent music producer Yu Fei hopes to be the first Chinese recording engineer to win a Grammy.
"Dreams are like seeds in our hearts. As long as they are alive, and you devote yourself to them, you will see them grow up and bear fruit one day," she said.
Yu said she began studying as a pianist when she was 3 years old, often winning top awards at piano competitions. And it was not until she was 16 that she had found her true calling after submitting a recording of her performance as part of an entrance application for a competition.
"My teacher took me to the studio of the Central Conservatory of Music [in Beijing], where I discovered the work of an audio engineer was so cool. The engineer covered up my mistakes and improved the tone with recording technologies. The process was like a reproduction of music, which I was really interested to learn. Thus, when I graduated from high school, I applied to attend the Department of Sound Recording of Beijing Film Academy, and I was admitted to the school in 2006," said Yu.
After graduation from college in 2010, Yu was hired as an audio engineer by the China Film Group Corporation. However, she found the job uninteresting and resigned from the group in 2013 to take postgraduate studies in sound recording at McGill University in Canada.
"I was the first Chinese student in the [sound recording] department's 35 years of history. All of the teachers in the department were Grammy Award winners. They are my idols. When I was admitted on a scholarship, I felt like I was dreaming," she said.
Realizing she had a lot to learn, Yu never took holidays and slept less than four hours a day during her stay in Canada.
In 2014 and 2015, she won two gold awards at the student recording competition of the Audio Engineering Society (AES), an international society dedicated to audio technology. She was the first woman to win the gold award two consecutive times.
Yu said that when she attended the latest 59 AES conference in Montreal in July, she was the only woman present.
"It's true that there is prejudice [against women] in the recording industry. Due to the manual labor involved, men are thought to be more suitable to be an audio engineer," Yu said.
However, she believes that with talent, diligence and determination, she and other women will be recognized in the industry.
Today, Yu works as an independent music producer and sound engineer. She also serves as an assistant to Grammy and Oscar-award winner Richard King, who is known for his work in "The Dark Knight," "Inception" and "Interstellar."