Former rock star Luo Qi attempts a comeback

Rock singer Luo Qi is back in the spotlight after about two decades' absence from the country's rock scene. She prepares to release a new album and hold a concert at MasterCard Center in Beijing next month.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Life's been a roller-coaster ride for rock singer Luo Qi.

She was just 16 when she came to Beijing in 1991 from eastern China's Jiangxi province to become the lead singer for the now defunct Chinese rock band Compass. But her high-pitched voice was powerful enough to make her a top female star on the country's rock scene.

In 1993, Luo lost vision in her left eye in a violent bar brawl in Beijing. The following year she left the band and went solo. But her career took a downturn a year later, when she became addicted to drugs.

Since 1998, Luo has been living in Berlin with her husband. Her fans in China have missed her, but many new rock stars were also born while she's been away.

But in January, Luo, now 39, popped up on Chinese TV screens as a participant of I Am a Singer, a reality show broadcast by Hunan Satellite TV Station. Although she didn't finish the competition because she was then seven months pregnant, her fans cheered her attempt to make a comeback.

On a recent afternoon at the Post Mountain Art Space in Beijing, Luo was seen again, still looking the part she'd played in Chinese rock music nearly two decades ago. These days, she divides her time between Berlin and Beijing, as she prepares to release a new album and hold a concert at MasterCard Center in Beijing next month.

"I'm going to do covers for hit numbers and maybe a few songs from my own new album," says Luo of the upcoming concert. "I am very nervous (about it). I am exercising every day to guarantee my physical condition." She's the mother of an 8-month-old boy.

Luo tells China Daily that she has finished recording her new album along with her more recent band, Cold Air, whose members had accompanied her on the reality TV show earlier this year.

The unnamed album contains a dozen songs from her favorite new bands, both Chinese and Western.