Growing up in northeastern China, Alison Qu dreamed of one thing: to move to America and become a country music star.
“James Taylor, Alison Krauss. Dixie Chicks, the Carpenters, and of course, very early on Taylor Swift era,” Qu listed as inspirations. “The reason why I fell in love with music in the first place was because I felt like there’s basically a whole life behind every single song. In music, I was able to see the other side of the world.”
Today, Qu is the founder and executive director of CHUANG Stage, the country’s first theater company dedicated to telling Asian American stories. CHUANG tells those stories bilingually and transculturally, and in the five years since the company’s founding, Qu has grown into one of the leading voices in the Boston grassroots theater community. It’s an American dream of a different sort than the one that inspired Qu to come to America, but still one just as enamored with the craft of storytelling that made Qu fall in love with country music in the first place.
Qu, 26, grew up in Jilin City — a city of about 1.8 million, which is small by China’s standards. Qu described their parents as two artistically-minded people: a movie nerd mother and a father who repaired the audio equipment and projectors for Karaoke centers. Growing up in the early 2000s, Qu would pore over the selection of American artists at the CD store. That’s where the obsession with country music began. When they were 12 years old, they begged their parents to let them go to the U.S. for high school. Eventually, after two years of pressing, their parents agreed.
Imagining a future in country music, Qu transferred to a high school in Tennessee, mostly to be close to Nashville. But soon after moving to America, they struggled to see themself as a musician. More broadly,…
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