Guoren Lang quit his job, took his son to Beijing and rented a tiny, unheated studio, where he was his son's cook, nanny and chauffeur. Lang Lang's parents would live apart for the next 12 years.
The father took the son to the conservatory every morning on his decrepit bicycle. "The steel bars collapsed a few times because I was a heavy kid," Lang Lang remembered.
There were also neighbors to placate. The cheap apartment complex, made of cinderblock and plywood, hardly had any soundproofing, and Lang Lang practiced six hours a day. In the end the boy's passion for music moved his neighbors to accept his trills and bangs.
Lang Lang has a horde of publicists -- 10 in all, assigned by his record company and his manager -- to create the image of a polished, worldly genius. But not every music critic is swooning over him. John von Rhein, music critic for The Chicago Tribune, called his performance at last year's Ravinia Festival "unacceptably willful." He loved "strutting his stuff," von Rhein wrote.
But even his harshest critics agree that Lang Lang possesses enormous musical talent, with the potential to grow and mature as artist. "I make all of my own decisions now," he said. "I make my own decisions when I play the piano. I make my own decisions when I interact with people."
America has given him the chance to exert his independence. At 15, with first prize from the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians under his belt, he was recruited by the pianist Gary Graffman, director of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. The school offered him a full scholarship and money for his father to come to take care of him.
In the US Lang Lang quickly learned English from a private tutor hired by Curtis, but his father did not. Soon it was the son who made the important decisions, father and son said.
After he had gained stardom, Lang Lang bought a large house in downtown Philadelphia, but his mother still lives in Shenyang. The reason, father and son explained, is that Lang Lang spends much of his time traveling outside of Pennsylvania to give concerts.
Does she miss her husband and son? "Sure," Lang Lang answered, "but she is having the time of her life now. On the streets, people point at her and say, `Wow, that's Lang Lang's mom."'
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