Song Zuying in New York: Singing for China's Leaders: The New Yorker In one of Mao's most revered motivational speeches, five years before the Red Army gained control of China, he clued his comrades in on a weapon no less potent than guns: "We must also have a cultural army, which is absolutely indispensable for uniting our own ranks and defeating the enemy." He himself had married a movie starlet, who would later wreak havoc in the Cultural Revolution. His successor, President Xi, also allied himself with a performing artist: his wife, Peng Liyuan, is one of the country's best-known pop-folk icons, and, fittingly, wears the lapel pins of a major general. Recently, another warrior of the arts with a connection to China's leaders led a small brigade to New York. Song Zuying, a pop singer who has been nicknamed Nightingale, Mommy, Song Ph.D., and First Mistress (more on that later), arrived to launch a three-week-long American concert tour at Radio City Music Hall. The day before her performance, Song Zuying met with a bevy of Chinese journalists in the conference room of a midtown high-rise. The walls were festooned with glossy posters of Song in a long crimson gown. "I am so proud to have been dispatched to the U.S.," she said. Song is forty-six years old, with an unlined face - of the shape most coveted by the Chinese, the "sunflower seed" - that has aged little in the two decades since she became a household name in China. Her first big hit, in 1990, was "Tiny Basket," a sentimental ode to rural girlhood. Since 2003, she has also been member of the People's Political Consultative Conference, China's top government advisory organization. To greet her "media friends," Song, whose stage outfits have ranged from military regalia to ethnic Hmong garb (befitting her heritage) to taffeta ball gowns, wore an olive-green cropped jacket and towering peep-toe pumps with a metallic lining that matched the glittery silver tips of her acrylic nails. "I hope everyone can feel the power of music, that my voice can bring the people of China luck and happiness," Song said in soft southern Mandarin. When she cleared her throat, her coral lips twitched and her synthetic lashes fluttered but her hair, a feathery mass with plum-tinted bouffant bangs, remained almost entirely still. She went on sombrely, "It is a duty we must perform in our best mental and physical states." After a moment, Song introduced the rest of the troops: a Mandopop singer in jeans and a bow tie with a similarly immovable wreath of sculpted hair; a thirty-one-year-old conductor; and a Tibetan tenor whose distinctly non-Han name Song had trouble remembering (fortunately, the rest of her team said his name in unison whenever a reminder proved necessary). "It's the brand we establish that's important," the tour's artistic director, Xu Peidong, said. He was referring to the brand of the Chinese state, which has been sending marquee mainland artists around the world for the past couple of years. The conductor nodded vigorously. He called the choice of Song a "very prudent decision" because "the reason we are coming to the world stage is to win respect, approval, and affirmation." Of whom? America, of course. "It was a correct decision to lead with Teacher Song," he said, "because she has considerable influence on the world stage. We pay special attention to the U.S. because it is here where Chinese culture must receive its proper respect. He added, "I can say that we are very, very victorious at this stage." No one in the room asked about the enduring rumor that Song owes much of her career to Jiang Zemin, the former Chinese President forty years her senior, or about the exact nature of their personal relationship. The silence is perhaps prudent. A Beijing scholar who investigated the subject was later put under house arrest. While journalists have been barred from probing, the subject is a favorite on Chinese social networks online. When a clip of an old comedy skit featuring Song and Peng - as coincidences would have it, playing the Empress Dowager - surfaced some weeks earlier, the comments section became a caption contest of sorts: "The Starlet who Slept with the Wrong President"; "The First Lover and First Lady"; "Rivalry of the Misses!" The government has not given commenters free rein, though. The combination of the names "Jiang" and "Song" is unsearchable on Weibo, the Chinese microblog. Before concluding his remarks, Mr. Xu spoke about the "innovative aspect" of this year's international venture. For those who attended the Saturday performance, "rote" may come to mind as the more appropriate adjective for everything from Song's studied soprano to her four perfunctory costume changes. This tour is different from the others because we have made a conscious decision to do something different. Before this tour, we had always given away tickets because in our Chinese culture, giving things away is the face-saving thing to do. Here, the director patted down his tie and paused, studying his new surroundings. But here in America, you see, it's quite the opposite. Commercialism. Selling tickets. Here, that is the true way to save face. Photograph: ChinaFotoPress/Getty.