This Chinese performer who recorded for the Lyrichord series of international recordings in the late-'60s is a virtuoso performer on both the erh-hu, a two-string violin, and the Chinese butterfly harp. He hailed from the same province of China as Dr. Sun Yat Sen, the autocratic ruler who was overthrown by the communist Chinese. Man-Sing began performing as a soloist as a youth, traveling back and forth between larger cities such as Shanghai, Nanking, Peiping, Tientsin, Hankow, and Canton. He used both of his instruments to display incredible virtuosity, some of which was devoted to imitating the sounds of birds and other animals as well as reflecting on the glories of a nature in a more abstract manner. The erh-hu is one of China's oldest instruments, having come into the country from Tibet sometime during the Chou Dynasty, a thousand year span beginning somewhere around 1100 B.C. It was already a beautiful and expressive instrument when Man-Sing got ahold of it, but despite its epic history, he still managed to make a major improvement in the design. This involved combining a single steel string with another made of thread or silk. This livened up the sound of the instrument, as if such a thing was possible. Now the instrument could perform passages with a sound more like a violin. The thing was in the string because king is what this made him, as in "King of the Erh-hu," which was a common nickname for this artist. He often led his own ensemble featuring other traditional Chinese instruments such as the ti-hsiao, cheng, san-sen, and pipa along with percussion instruments such as the dar-gue and the dar-bue. His ensemble featured such artists as Fung Wah, Wony Yuet-Song, Liu Sum, and Lau Ching-ting. His daughter is the vocalist Lui Hung, who collaborated with her father on the Chinese Folk Songs project, also released on the Lyrichord label. This is a collection of ten songs about love and nature from verses by Samuel Tsoi, arranged by Lui Man-Sing. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide