Born in Beijing China, Cheng Yu is well-known pipa soloist. At 13, she won the Chinese National Youth Competition of Traditional Music Instrument Performances and, in 1981, was admitted the Xian Conservatory of Music to continue her pipa studies and also to study the guqin. She moved to the UK in 1988 where she has performed with many organizations and co-founded the UK Chinese Ensemble. In 2004, she completed her PhD on the ancient music of Xi'an at the University of London. The pipa is a fretted, four-string lute, closely related to the European lute. The qugin or qin is an unfretted, 7-string zither. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.