by John Oseid

With the Beijing Olympics about to tumble upon us, it's time to share a trendy new Chinese singer with you. Betcha didn't see that coming.

Last spring Sa Dingding won a prestigious BBC World Music award for her album Alive. The CD, released in the States this week, presents an elegant and alluring persona; 24 pages of album notes are straight out of a lush candy-coated fashion spread, her silky outfit with the Bodhisattva print is right off the runway.

But I'm not sure yet what to make of her sound. Lush zithers, horsehead fiddles, and other traditional instruments are matched with electronica beats and the occasional hint of a rap. Pounding and crashing percussion conjures epic-movie music, a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I'm still swishing around the flavors, if you will.

For her eclecticism, she's been dubbed an Asian Bjork. Rubbish. She's channeling Kate Bush if anyone, especially on the album's final cut, the faint "Qin Shang." (Yeah, I had Kate's "Wuthering Heights" record tucked right behind my Van Halen back in the day.) If Sa Dingding's voice is cutesy at times, its fragile and ethereal qualities can be stunning.

Alive features works in several languages, including both a Mandarin and a Sanskrit version of the title track. The latter has become Sa Dingding's signature song and is the first download on her MySpace page. The video at the top of this page was shot in Tibet with brilliant production values and a seeming cast of thousands.

The half-Mongolian, half-Han Chinese singer has an absorbing bio. She discusses growing up on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia in an interview with AOL's music site Spinner.com.

I have no idea what Sa Dingding is singing about in any of her languages, not least the one which she made up herself for the song "Lagu Lagu." And it doesn't really matter. One can't help but wonder, though, what her private take on Tibet is.