Tan: I always wanted to get into the Hunan Opera but I was not allowed because at that time it was the Cultural Revolution. Mao Zedong (said of high school and college graduates): "They're all poisoned and you have to (be) re-educated by farmers, workers, to teach you how to plant the rice, how to feed pigs, how to clean the bathroom. Then your spirit is clean. Otherwise you would be just poisoned by all this academic knowledge." So before I was re-educated, of course I wasn't allowed to be a musician. ... That's why I planted rice. ... I also cooked for 200 people. Meanwhile, my real re-education was I got a chance to collect all this dialect and folk songs. I start to organize the local farmers to play the old ghost operas, which were ritualistic music. ... I teach them how to write, how to read. And they teach me all this old music.

AP: You then applied for the Beijing conservatory?

Tan: They thought I could be a wonderful pianist, a wonderful violinist, or a wonderful composer. I said I am a wonderful composer but I can't play piano but I can play fiddle. ... They said can you fiddle some Mozart or some Beethoven? I said I even don't know who is Mozart, who is Beethoven. ... Then he said, what could you do for us? I said I can do improvising. I can sing 500 folk songs. I can show you all my research on oldest music, my collections for all those disappearing old stuff. ...

I ... stayed about eight years in the conservatory to learn all the tradition of Western music because ... all our teachers were graduates of the Moscow Conservatory. ... After that, the country opened and I started to be influence(d) by Western avant-garde — John Cage, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Elliott Carter, ... (Toru) Takemitsu. I start to be very hungry for new music. ... So I applied for Columbia University.

AP: While at Columbia, you used to fiddle on the streets of New York to get money?

Tan: Yeah. ... My scholarship just covered tuition. I didn't have any money for my living expenses, even the rent, the food.

AP: What about the politics of "The First Emperor" story? On the one hand Qin Shi Huang was a brutal autocrat who conquered warring fiefdoms. On the other, he had great economic, social and artistic accomplishments. The libretto depicts him searching for a musical anthem to unite the hearts of the people. Are you trying to say something politically?