In 2011, Zhao was invited to appear as a guest performer at a concert held at the Hung Hom Coliseum by famous Hong Kong pop star Hacken Lee. His solo sanxian part was gobbled up by audiences.

"We played seven shows in a row. In every show, the audience would explode when I started to play," Zhao recalled. "They were going nuts for the sanxian."

According to Zhao, some listeners could not believe such a powerful sound could come from an acoustic instrument. After one performance, a renowned composer told him backstage that he thought Zhao was only miming to a hidden electric guitar.

Zhao's lectures on the sanxian and the history and culture surrounding it have been received with almost as much fervor as his performances. He delivered two on the same day at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 2019. "For the second one, the place was packed," he recalls.

Though his success now is undeniable, Zhao's early career was far from smooth. He failed the entrance exam twice before finally passing to enroll as a student in the traditional Chinese instruments department at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.

He was born into a salt-of-the-earth family in Qiaoli town, North China's Shanxi province. His father practiced traditional Chinese medicine and his mother was a rural housewife.

"No one in my family had any musical background," he says. "But they were unconditionally supportive of me learning music, especially my mom."