To remember him, Wu has a portrait of him tattooed on her left arm. The sentimental girl keeps her old mobile phone so that she can still look at all the text messages her father sent to her.

Since young, Wu knew her vocation is to be a performer, just like her parents. She started singing R&B at 9 and likes interpreting different songs in her own way.

She attributes her unique stage presence to her childhood, when she was exposed to a variety of music elements from different places.

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Her latest experiment is an improvisation of singer Huang Ling's song, Itch, which she combines with The Wandering Songstress, a song from the 1937 Chinese film Street Angel.

Wu is proud of her work. But some audiences find the remix weird and say she has destroyed the songs.

"I don't think it's strange," she says. "Every song, each lyric, I perform with my own style."

Bai Yu, the owner of a bar in Shenyang, where Wu performed regularly before participating in The Voice of China, says he was bowled over by Wu's voice the first time he heard her.

"She can sing a romantic love song with a wild rock style. At the beginning, I was worried whether her invention could be accepted by the audiences but she conquered them," Bai says.

One of the online articles written about Wu read: "Wu's performance turns traditional Chinese aesthetics upside down She's a rarity in the country and we need people like her."

Wu admits that her greatest challenge now is adjusting from nobody to somebody. She hasn't returned home for a long time and she couldn't go shopping like before.

The young singer hopes her music passion will last for a long time.

"I grew up in the big caravan, which, in my parents' days, represented freedom, passion and courage," says Wu.

"My dream is to hit the road in the big caravan again and invite like-minded musician friends to perform with me."

Contact the writer at chennan@chinadaily.com.cn.

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