22 Facts About Peng Liyuan

Peng Liyuan is a Chinese contemporary folk singer and the wife of Xi Jinping, current General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and President of China.

Peng Liyuan sang the theme songs of several popular TV series, such as The Water Margin.

Peng Liyuan was the president of then People's Liberation Army Academy of Art between 2012 and 2017, and vice president of the All-China Youth Federation between 2005 and 2010.

Peng Liyuan is known within China for her fashion sense, credited to her personal couturier Ma Ke.

In 2014, Peng Liyuan was listed as the 57th Most Powerful Woman in the World by Forbes.

Peng Liyuan was born in Yuncheng County, Shandong Province, China.

Peng Liyuan's father, Peng Longkun, was the director of Yuncheng County Cultural Center, and her mother Li Xiuying was a major opera singer in the Yuncheng County Yu Opera Troupe.

In 1976, at the age of 14, Peng Liyuan was admitted to the Shandong Province Yuncheng No 1 Middle School.

In 1981, Peng Liyuan was admitted to the China Conservatory of Music as a tertiary student, where she studied under the famous singer Jin Tielin.

In 1983, when Kim Jong Il, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, visited China for the first time, Peng Liyuan sang a bilingual rendition of the well-known North Korean song The Flower Girl.

In 1985, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the victory in the war and the 40th anniversary of the premiere of The White-Haired Girl, Peng Liyuan appeared in Beijing's Tianqiao Theatre, where she became the third-generation "Xi'er" after Wang Kun and Guo Lanying, and achieved the "Plum Blossom Award" - the highest honor in China's theater industry.

Peng Liyuan's singing of On the Field of Hope, a song about the generational and emotional ties of people who work the land, made the song famous in the 1980s.

In 2002, Peng Liyuan was appointed as a visiting professor at the Shandong University Of Arts, and in September 2004, she was appointed as a visiting professor at the China Conservatory of Music.

In September 2005, at the invitation of the organizing committee of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, Peng Liyuan performed the Chinese opera Psalms of Mulan for the first time at the Lincoln Center in New York City, and was awarded the Distinguished Artist Award by the Artistic Committee of the Lincoln Center for the Arts.

Since then, Peng Liyuan has been actively involved in tuberculosis prevention and treatment publicity work, participating in national "World Tuberculosis Prevention and Control Day" publicity activities annually, and paying condolences to patients with tuberculosis on many occasions.

Peng Liyuan's husband became the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2012 and President of the People's Republic of China in March 2013.

Peng Liyuan is actively involved in politics and is a member of the 11th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

Since 2012, Peng Liyuan has served as the director of the People's Liberation Army Academy of Art.

Peng Liyuan sang in a song-and-dance number in 2007 shown on Chinese television that featured Tibetans thanking the Chinese military for "liberating" them.

Directly after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in June 1989, Peng Liyuan sang for the martial-law troops.

Peng Liyuan was introduced by friends to Xi Jinping in 1986, when Xi was working as the deputy mayor of the eastern port city of Xiamen, Fujian.

Four days later, Peng Liyuan returned to Beijing to appear in the National Art Festival, and then immediately departed for the United States and Canada to perform.