Xie Tian Xiao (谢天笑), rock singer, guitarist, guzheng player, short form: XTX or X.T.X. Born in 1972 in the town of Zibo, Shandong province, China. At the age of 9 he played roles at the Beijing Opera, and appeared in the role of "The Monkey King" in a local operatic production of Journey to the West. After being placed under a six-month juvenile "house arrest" for stealing bicycles, he relieved the boredom by teaching himself to play bass and guitar. In 1990, he began composing his own songs. A year later, he moved to Beijing to develop his musical career. In 1994, Xie Tianxiao formed his first band, Hunters of the Cloth (出家的猎人 / Chujia de Lieren). Not long afterward, he wrote and recorded 你不像/Ni Bu Xiang (English title: You're Not at All), the theme song for the soundtrack of the film Vietnamese Girl / Biandang de Guniang). In 1997, he founded the band Cold Blooded Animal (冷血动物) with bassist Li Ming, his childhood friend from Shandong. Although the band went through a number of personnel changes (past drummers include Liang Xu, Wu Rui and several others), they soon established a loyal fan base. Between 1997 and 2002, Cold Blooded Animal performed hundreds of gigs in Beijing, released their first album (2000) and played on tour in China and the U.S. In 2001, they were the first Chinese rock band to appear at the South By Southwest Music Festival (SXSW) in Austin, Texas. From 2002-2003, Xie Tianxiao lived in the U.S., playing his music in Los Angeles and New York. Upon returning to China, he promptly proposed to his fiancee (now his wife, with whom he has two children, a boy and a girl) and set about re-establishing the band, renaming it "X.T.X. & Cold Blooded Animal" (谢天笑与冷血动物) . Since then, Xie Tianxiao's stardom has been on the rise. He and his band have released two more albums, each of which has sold hundreds of thousands of official copies, and perhaps millions of pirated copies. They have toured China, travelled to Europe and Japan, released a series of rock videos and are now a staple on Chinese radio and television, on the Internet and in CD/DVD shops all over China.