Nine-year-old Lang Lang returned home two hours later than usual because he was asked to join the school choir. His father had thought his boy had been playing and was fuming with rage.

What happened next may explain the drive behind one of the best pianists the world would ever have.

On this particular Beijing day, Lang Guoren was feeling the pressure. He was living off his wife's small income and the neighbors didn't understand why the father and son had moved from their home in Northeast China all this way to Beijing. It was 1992. "What future was there in playing a piano?" They may have asked.

To make matters worse, Lang Lang's tutor had said he would not teach him any longer.

When the boy finally came home, the angry father beat the boy black and blue without asking anything.

He then gave him a bottle of tablets and screamed: "You don't practice hard, why not kill yourself? Take the pills or jump off the building, you can choose.

"Then I'll die with you."

In complete shock, the boy opened the bottle, but threw it to the floor. He then told his father what he did that afternoon: playing piano for the choir.

The desperate father hugged his son and cried.

They say that behind every successful man there is a woman. But for world famous pianist Lang Lang, his father has always been the driving force behind the pianist's achievements.

Born in 1954 into a worker's family in Shenyang, Liaoning province, Lang senior showed great interest in music when he was a boy. He learned Chinese flute, the only instrument the family could afford. He also made an erhu fiddle by himself.

But the "Cultural Revolution" (1966-76) sent Lang into a factory, then to a local acrobatic ensemble before finally he served as a policeman.

The best years of Lang's generation were wasted in the political turmoil, so it was common for parents of their age to pin their hopes on their children. Lang was such a typical father.

When the 3-year-old Lang Lang played a neighbor's piano for fun, his fingerwork amazed their neighbor surnamed Jin, who was the conductor of the performance ensemble of the Shenyang Air Force.

He urged Lang's father to buy a piano, saying his son would be a big star. Believing in his boy's potential, Lang spent 1,700 yuan ($240) -- an astronomical sum for a common family at that time -- to buy a piano.

In the first year, the father taught himself to play the piano before teaching his son. The next year, Lang took his son to Zhu Yafen, a piano professor of Shenyang Conservatory of Music.

When he realized that Shenyang was too small for his son, Lang quit his job and accompanied Lang Lang to Beijing in 1992. Lang Lang's mother stayed behind to earn money to support the father and son's life and study in Beijing.

"When professor Zhu suggested us to move to Beijing, I hesitated for a while because it meant we had to give up many things in Shenyang and the life of the family would totally change," he said.

"But for the future of Lang Lang, we would like to do everything."

They rented an apartment in Beijing and started a lonely and hard life in the city without the support of friends or relatives.

Because he was not a Beijing citizen, Lang Lang had to pay extra money to the primary and middle schools attached to Central Conservatory of Music.

In the afternoon, he studied piano with a teacher of the Central Conservatory of Music.

"The first year in Beijing was pretty hard. I was father, mother, maid, chef, play partner and the assistant teacher everyday," Lang says.

The only thing that made the tough father angry was when Lang Lang slackened off.

"At that time I was afraid of my father and longed for my mother. But I never hated my father," Lang recalls.

"My father was very stern and strict with me but the point is, I was never forced to play the piano.

"I really enjoy playing the keyboard and it was my own choice. I had the ambition to be a piano master when I was 5 and my parents helped me achieve the goal."

In 1994, Lang won fifth place in a national competition, however the Ministry of Culture would only pay for the top four players to participate the Anderlinger Youth Piano Competition in Germany.

Believing that an international competition would help broaden Lang Lang's horizons, Lang senior borrowed 50,000 yuan from relatives and friends. Lang Lang repaid his father's faith by winning first prize. It was his first world champion.

"I was very strict with Lang Lang, but he understands me and works very hard," says Lang senior.

"What I want to say is as the parents, you can do anything for your son regardless of any repayment."

(China Daily June 16, 2008)