Chinese pianist Lang Lang performs with the Stockholm Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. June 13, 2008. (AP)

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Twenty-six year old Chinese pianist Lang Lang is an international superstar and the face of a new China. He played a prominent role in Beijing’s lavish opening ceremony on Friday.

But the road to fame hasn’t been easy. He’s been working at it since the age of 3. His parents’ dreams thwarted by the Cultural Revolution, Lang Lang became their future. At 9, he moved with his father to Beijing. At 15, they traveled to America.

He studied at top schools and is now, some argue, one of the best classical pianists in the world — and a phenomenon in China.

This hour, On Point: China’s Lang Lang.

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Guests:

Lang Lang, internationally acclaimed classical pianist, he played at the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, and is author of the new book, with David Ritz, “Journey of a Thousand Miles: My Story.”

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. He profiled Lang Lang in the magazine’s August 4 issue.

Links and multimedia:

Read an excerpt from Lang Lang’s “Journey of a Thousand Miles: My Story.”

Langlang.com – The official website of Lang Lang

Watch a famous YouTube video of Lang Lang playing Chopin with orange:

A list of the music played during this hour:

• Xian Xinghai: “Prelude: The Song of The Yellow River Boatmen”
• Franz Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
• Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1 In C Major, Op. 15 – III. Rondo.
• Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme Of Paganini, Op. 43: Variation XVIII
• Happy Times – [From the 2007 album Dragon Songs]
• Horses – a live recording at Carnegie Hall, a duet with his father, Guo-Ren Lang on the Erhu, a traditional Chinese two-stringed fiddle.
• He Luting: The Cowherd’s Flute (Mutong duandi)
• Chopin: Sonata for Piano No. 3 in B Minor, B. 155, Op. 58: II. Scherzo (Molto Vivace)
• Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B Flat Minor, Op. 23, I.
• Mozart: Sonata for Piano No. 10 in C Major, K. 330
• Xian Xinghai: The Yellow River: III. The Yellow River in wrath

Dara Torres at the US Olympic swimming trials in Omaha, Neb., July 3, 2008. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

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Getting to the Olympics — not to mention winning gold there — takes more than worldclass physical ability. As athletes and coaches know all too well, the competitive edge is as much in the mind.

So are the challenges. How does it feel to be U.S. hopeful Eric Shanteau, postponing cancer treatment to swim 200 meters in Beijing? Or China’s star hurdler, Liu Xiang, with the pride of 1.3 billion people riding on his every step?

The head games can be brutal. What is it like to be U.S. swimmer Dara Torres, staging an Olympic comeback at 41, while her coach is home battling a potentially deadly blood disorder? To be basketball star Yao Ming, Team China’s hope against the U.S., whose injured foot became a Chinese national obsession?

This hour, On Point: The minds of Olympians, and what it takes to get to Beijing.

You can join the conversation. What does it take to go for the gold? To win it? Sheer guts? Good genes? A streak of crazy? Have you done it yourself? Do you know someone who has? Who are you pulling for in Beijing? Tell us what you think.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

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Guests:

Joining us from Beijing is Alex Wolff. He’s a senior staff writer for Sports Illustrated, covering his fifth Summer Games. He takes a special interest in basketball.

Joining us from Stanford, California, is JoAnn Dahlkoetter. She’s a world-class athlete, winner of the San Francisco marathon in 1980, and a sports psychologist who works with Olympic athletes. She’s the author of “Your Performing Edge: The Total Mind-body Program for Excellence in Sports, Business and Life.” She is currently working with 2008 U.S. Olympic marathoner Magdalena Lewy Boulet, now in Beijing.

And joining us from Mars Hill, North Carolina, is Nancy Hogshead-Makar. A U.S. Olympic swimmer, she won three gold medals and one silver at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. She was a teammate of Dara Torres in the 4×100-meter relay that clinched a team gold in 1984. She’s now a professor at the Florida Coastal School of Law and is a major advocate of gender equity in sports.

Links and Multimedia:

Beijing ‘08 – SI.com
Sports Illustrated’s comprehensive coverage of the Beijing Olympics.

“After the Games”
An interactive multimedia feature from The New York Times’ Play Magazine, in which “eight Olympic legends discuss their greatest athletic moments and life after competition.” Also, “The State Requests That Citizen Liu Win Gold,” looks at the intense pressure on China’s star hurdler Liu Xiang.

Beijing Beat – Newsweek
Newsweek’s Olympic blog keeps an eye on what’s happening beyond the sports.

The Atlantic’s James Fallows
Always worth reading, Fallows is on a long-term assignment for The Atlantic, first in Shanghai and now Beijing, and has been blogging about the run-up to the Olympics.

Beijing 2008
The official site of the 2008 Beijing Games.

Plus, listen back to On Point’s show on China and the Olympics in April, live from Shanghai.

And remember these?  See a YouTube video of some great Olympic Moments:

Tibetan exiles protested the Beijing Olympics torch rally and demanded Tibet's independence in New Delhi, India, on Thursday, April 17, 2008. (AP Photo/Gautam Singh)

Go to On Point in Shanghai: China’s Week in the News

Every week we hit the news on Friday. This week we do it from China. Things look different when you’re sitting in Shanghai. The pope’s visit to America? Invisible. The Dalai Lama in the U.S.? Big. CNN’s Jack Cafferty and his offhand taunt toward China? Huge. You wouldn’t believe the rumpus.

We’ve got Olympic politics, a once hot market in trouble, a party boss going down, and Tibet all over…

The Olympic flame burned though India, on a very short run in New Delhi (watch it on YouTube here).

CNN’s Jack Cafferty delivers a broadside China’s way — “I think they’re basically the same set of goons and thugs they have been for the past fifty years.” He says he was only going after the Chinese government.

Beijing hears it otherwise. Says he slandered the nation, and demands satisfaction: “We solemnly request CNN Cafferty to take back his malicious remarks and apologize to the Chinese people.”

This hour, a week in the news China-style, live from Shanghai.

What’s your top story this week — in the US? In China? In the world where they meet? What’s your take on China and the U.S. over the Olympics, hot tempers, trade, the Dalai Lama?

Guests:

Joining us from Beijing is Yang Rui, bigtime host of the daily English-language current-affairs show “Dialogue,” on China’s government-run television network, CCTV. It’s one of the top-rated shows on CCTV’s eleven channels in China. He is careful to say he is here not as a representative of CCTV or the Chinese government, but as an informed Chinese citizen.

With us from Hong Kong is Willy Lo-Lap Lam. He’s a longtime, top Hong Kong journalist who’s worked in senior positions with the South China Morning Post, Asia Week, and the Asia-Pacific headquarters of CNN. He is currently a Senior Fellow in the China Program at The Jamestown Foundation, a group that informs U.S. policymakers about parts of the world with media constraints—like China.

And with us in our studio in Shanghai is James Areddy, Shanghai correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. He is part of the WSJ team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for International Reporting on China.

It is now less than six months to the opening ceremonies of the summer Olympic Games in Beijing. The Olympic torch has begun its journey. Olympic politics — over Tibet and Darfur and more — are in full gear.

And in pools and on tracks and pommel horses across the country, top American athletes are swinging into the home stretch of their drive for the games.

This hour, On Point: as the politics rage and the calendar rolls, we talk with Olympic hopefuls about what it takes to make the games.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Chellsie Memmell, gymnast. She’s the 2005 All-Around World Champion.

Jarrod Shoemaker, triathlete. He has qualified for Beijing.

Rebecca Soni, swimmer, a junior at the University of Southern California, defending NCAA champion in the 200-yard breaststroke.

Brian Caseneuve, covers the Olympics for Sports Illustrated magazine.