Maestro weaved his magic to convey spirit of novel

"With each song finished, I would invite the director, those who are experts on the novel and others from the production team to my home to listen to the song I played on my piano."

Apart from writing the score, the other big challenge for him was to find the right singer to interpret the songs.

"I didn't want to have professionals or well-known singers because they have their own styles. I was looking for someone who would match the particular role in the TV series."

He then discovered Chen Li, an amateur singer, an assembly line worker in a car factory in Changchun.

Chen, who was introduced to Wang Liping through a friend in Changchun, had learned Peking Opera, and her voice was "clean and pure", he says.

"I taught her how to sing the songs word by word. She learned very quickly and was highly flexible and adaptable. She was like a little girl walking into the garden in the Dream of the Red Chamber. Her singing is full of curiosity. She recognized the tragedy of characters in the novel, and she sang with absolute empathy."

Over the past 30 years many singers have performed the songs from the TV series, but for many aficionados of fine music the original versions of the songs are hard to beat.

"For me, composing for Dream of the Red Chamber turned out to be a lifelong honor, even if it did not come without hardships," Wang Liping says. "Everybody's hard work paid off, and even though 30 years have passed since the TV series was first shown, people still talk about it and say how they love the music. For them it conveys the spirit of Cao's novel."