In pictures: Meet Jia Ruhan, no ordinary pop star

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  Jia Ruhan performs at the Shanghai World Music Festival in 2013. The 31-year-old studied western opera in university but says her next album aims to combine traditional Chinese songs with western rock-pop style.

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  “I am a classically trained soprano,” Ms Jia says. “I have spent my whole life making my voice pure and clean. Now I have to learn to sing with a growl or a county twang.”

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  Ms Jia travelled to the UK to play the Queen Mother of Heaven in ‘Monkey: Journey to the West’, an opera co-produced by the British musician Damon Albarn.

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  Ms Jia also sang on a track on Christopher Tin’s album ‘Calling All Dawns’, which went on to win the award for Best Classical Crossover at the 2011 Grammys.

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  Unlike her first album, which was mainly in English, Ms Jia’s next album will be in Chinese. ‘I am Chinese, so I should make Chinese music: that way I can really be an international Chinese musician,’ she says.

Jia Ruhan is being groomed by Chinese authorities to become a global pop star as a way of expanding its cultural influence worldwide.