Pianist Wang Xiaohan. Photo provided to China Daily

"I had no idea whether to play the piano for a living or just for fun. But I'm obedient. My father and teachers believed I should spend more time on the piano, thus I went to the middle school attached to the conservatory," Wang says.

In 1997, he won the ARD Music contest in Munich and met the renowned Israeli pianist Arie Vardi, who made Wang his student at the Hochschule fuer Musik in Hanover, Germany, the following year.

Vardi also taught Chinese pianists Li Yundi and Chen Sa, and while Li and Chen enjoy much more fame than Wang does in China, Vardi praised Wang highly in a previous interview with China Daily.

Wang's breakthrough came in 2001 at the quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. He was not only the Texas contest's youngest finalist but also the first competitor who played his own composition. But the same Van Cliburn turned Wang's Waterloo in 2005.

One of the judges that year asked Wang why he had returned to Van Cliburn. "You come to win not to practice, but you don't seem to be in a good condition," Wang quotes the judge as telling him.

Wang admitted that he was not sure about the competition. "I felt great pressure to return to the same stage. I decided to apply at the last minute and could not carefully choose the repertoire."

He failed before the final round. Thereafter, he didn't return to the stage for six months until in December, when he won the fourth prize at the Telekom Beethoven Competition in Bonn, Germany.

"I cried and called Vardi to say, 'I did it'", he says.

The rise and fall at Van Cliburn helped Wang to think things through. He immersed himself in learning from Vardi, and practiced hard and continued to compose. When he played Mozart's Cadenza at the same middle school where he now teaches, he began composing short pieces.