Hua Chenyu (Chinese: 华晨宇; born February 7, 1990) is a Chinese singer and songwriter. First debuting as the winner of Super Boy 2013, he gained widespread recognition for his vocal ability and stage performances after participating in Singer 2018.
Hua's sunrise concert held in Yantai in May 2024 attracted over 130,000 people in one show, making it one of the most-attended concerts of all-time. In September 2023, his concerts at the Beijing National Stadium saw over 100,000 people for two consecutive days. His album Tipping Point (2025) was named the 8th best-selling album globally in 2025 by the IFPI.
Early life Hua Chenyu was born to a wealthy family on February 7, 1990, in Zhushan County, Hubei province. His parents divorced when he was two years old and during his childhood he lived with his father, who remarried when he was ten years old. He began playing the flute at the age of five and took piano lessons in the fifth grade. He wrote his first song at the age of twelve after mastering piano.
After finishing middle school, Hua moved to Wuhan alone to attend the Fine Arts High School there. In 2010, he passed the college entrance examination and entered the Wuhan Conservatory of Music, where he studied pop music vocal performance and became the vocalist of a college rock band called Conseer.
Career Super Boy In 2013, shortly before graduating from the conservatory, Hua Hua entered the casting for the television talent contest Super Boy, which was produced by Hunan TV. On his first appearance to the audience, he sang his original "Lyricless Song" that gave him the label of being like a "Martian" for his unique expression. Two of the three judges considered him to be odd or crazy, but after the third judge Laure Shang asked him a few questions and sang a lyricless duet with him, she said "he is a genius!" because "he knew intuitively how to express emotions through music". Due to the recommendation of Laure Shang and his performance of "The Kill", Hua made it past the first round of audition. He later sang with Laure Shang the song "The Star" in the final round on September 27, 2013. Hua Chenyu won the 2013 "Super Boy" contest.
After the competition, Hua was signed to the Chinese record label EE-Media, where most of the Super Boy and Super Girl contestants are linked. His debut single "Me and Myself" was released in September 2013. Hua also took part in the Super Boy Tour with other contestants, in which they toured eleven major Chinese cities. Performance During Super Boy ContestDatePerformanceResult2013/06/29"Lyricless Song" (Chenyu Hua's original)Top 10 of Changsha2013/07/12"The Kill" (Originally by 30 Seconds to Mars)National Top 202013/08/02"Somebody That I Used To Know" (Originally by Gotye)National Top 102013/08/09"I Am What I Am" (我) (Originally by Leslie Cheung張國榮)National Top 92013/08/16"We Are Young" (Originally by Fun)National Top 82013/08/23"My Dear Child" (親愛的小孩) (Originally by Julie Sue 蘇芮)National Top 72013/08/30"Fake Monk" (假行僧) (Originally by Jian Cui崔健)National Top 62013/09/06"Poker Face" (Originally by Lady Gaga)National Top 62013/09/13"The Star" with Laure Shang (小星星) (Originally by Laure Shang 尚雯婕)National Top 52013/09/201. "White Autumn" with Yico Zeng (白色秋天) (Originally by Yico Zeng 曾軼可) 2. "Provocation" (挑釁) (Originally by Shin 信樂團)National Top 3 (finalist)2013/09/271. "Red Bean" (紅豆) (Originally by Faye Wang 王菲)
2. "Mr. Lonely" with Gary Chaw (寂寞先生) (Originally by Gary Chaw 曹格)
3. "I Will Always Love You" (Originally by Whitney Houston)
4. "Boundless Oceans, Vast Skies" (海闊天空)(Originally by Beyond)Winner
2013–2014: First Mars Concert and debut album Quasimodo's Gift Chenyu Hua went to Italy and Spain to film for the TVN reality show "Divas Hit the Road" in April 2014 and the show was broadcast from April 25. The first episode received the highest viewership in its broadcast time slot.
May 2014, In less than a year since Hua's debut, he announced his first headlining concert, Mars Concert. His first headline concert, "Mars Concert", was held in Beijing on September 6, 2014, before his debut album was released. Over 10,000 tickets were sold out within two minutes, breaking several records and making him the first mainland Chinese singer of his generation to hold concerts in a large arena. Another concert on September 7 was then announced and sold out. Due to the massive response, the organizers announced an extra show on September 7. The press conference of the Mars Concert 2014 was held at the Wukesong Arena, making him the first in the Chinese music industry to hold press conference in a venue with capacity over a thousand. The September 6 concert was broadcast live through QQ Music and Hunan TV, attracting more than 400,000 online viewers. Over 120,000 E-tickets were sold.
Hua released his first solo album Quasimodo's Gift on September 19, 2014. On November 11, the short film Quasimodo's Gift was released, with Hua as the main character. His songs "Quasimodo's Gift" and "Ashes from the Fireworks" were included in the film, merging the music into the story. The music videos of the songs were cut from this short film. The overseas version of this album ranked number one on the Taiwan Five Music Chart for several weeks. This album reached number one on Jingdong's 2014 music sale chart.
In November, he was invited to appear on "Say Hi! The Hit of China", the online variety show of Tencent (Hi歌). In the program, Hua chose to rearrange the song "Spring" and won the "Annual Hit Song of China" (年度Hi歌). On December 24, he sang "Shimmer" and "Quasimodo's Gift" with rearranged piano composition at pianist Langlang's Beijing concert.
2015–2016: Aliens and Mars Concert
On January 1, 2015, Chenyu Hua for the first time joined and performed in the Liaoning TV New Year Gala. On January 10, "Shimmer" was announced as the interlude song of the Chinese television drama "You Are My Sunshine" (何以笙箫默). On February 8 (Los Angeles Time zone), Chenyu Hua was invited by Billboard as a VIP spectator to the 57th Annual Grammy Awards. On February 17, he performed in the Liaoning TV Chinese New Year Gala. On the Forbes China Celebrity 100 announced on May 11, his song charted for the first time with the integrated ranking of 91.
In early May, Hua's Mars Concert was announced to hold on August 1 in Shanghai. On October 28, his second album "Aliens" started pre-ordering on Jingdong. The limited 30,000 release almost sold out within a day. On November 7, his first digital album also started pre-ordering. Within eight minutes, over 100,000 units were sold. The album sold 350,000 copied on the first day of release. The promotional video of "Aliens" was aired on the LED screen at New York's Times Square for a week starting from December 23. Hua composed 7 of the 11 songs for this album.
In November, Chenyu Hua joined the television show Be the Idol (唱游天下) which was produced by Jiangsu TV. On February 8, he performed "For My Future Child" on Beijing TV Chinese New Year Gala. On March 4, Hua appeared as a guest on the variety show Ace to Ace (王牌对王牌) on Zhejiang TV. His arrangement of the song "Boluo Boluo Mi" (菠萝菠萝蜜) originally by Xie Na gained widespread attention and positive comments.
On March 7, the interlude song "The Rampage", which appears in the movie Who Sleeps My Bro, was released. On April 7, he released the song "Mars Intelligence Agency", which is the theme song for the online talk show with the same title. On April 9, he participated in the 16th Annual Festival of Top Chinese Music as ambassador and received two awards: Annual Best Album Performance for his album Aliens and Annual Best Idol. On July 8, Chenyu Hua's newly released song "Here We Are" was announced as the theme song for the movie Line Walker (使徒行者). Another self-composed song "To Be Free" was released on August 3 and it is the promotional song for the movie The Warriors Gate. On August 16, Chenyu Hua released his second English song "For Forever", which was specially created for the Mars Concert, written by Chenyu with WAVEBOY.
From October 2016 to January 2017, Hua participated as a celebrity mentor and judge in the first season of The Next () alongside Karen Mok, Fei Yu-Ching and Yang Kun. In this program, aspiring singers have the opportunity to challenge a celebrity mentor, who is assigned a song by the challenger and has 24 hours to prepare for the performance. Hua gained widespread recognition for his rearrangement and performances.
2017–2018: Studying abroad, TV shows, Mars Concert
On March 7, 2017, Hua released his third album H, which refers to his family name initial. After filming The Next, he went to study in Berklee College of Music until end of March. He learned singing and rapping skills but found many of the techniques are more suited to English songs than Chinese ones. He also learned how Pentatonic scale is used in Western music (as it was also widely used in traditional Chinese music), and he would incorporate it in his own songs, such as his arrangement of "Drinking Alone"). On June 3, Hua joined television travel show Flowers on Trip (旅途的花样) along with Lin Chi-ling, Zhang Xinyi, Aarif Rahman and others. They traveled to Morocco, Russia, Norway and Denmark, following the "One Belt, One Road" approach.
Hua was a judge on Tencent's new singing competition show The Coming One (明日之子), where his support for contestant Hez, a humanoid persona created using augmented reality and singing voice synthesizer technologies, sparked controversy on Chinese social media. The first episode of the show started live-streaming on June 10. On September 27, the makers of mobile MMO game Kings of Glory released its theme song for the in-game character Luban by Hua Chenyu.
In February 2018, Hua joined Singer 2018 (歌手2018) alongside acts including Jessie J, Wang Feng, Tengger, Angela Chang, KZ Tandingan after turning down the show for three years. During the show, he won first place in four episodes and his average percentage of votes ranked second among all the previous contestants in the six seasons of Singer. In the final episode, Hua's performance of "Light Years Away""光年之外"with G.E.M 邓紫棋 brought him to Top Four together with Jessie J, Wang Feng and Tengger. His final performance of Angela Chang's song "Shout""呐喊" earned him second place, after Jessie J. Chenyu Hua's performance of his self-written song "Heaven's Equal (齐天)" won Most Popular Song of the show.
That year, Hua composed the track "Halftime" for Karen Mok, In May–September 2018, he participated on Tencent's television show The Coming One 2 (明日之子 2) as a mentor. On September 8 and 9, 2018, Chenyu Hua had his 2018 Mars Concert in Beijing National Stadium on his fifth anniversary since debuting. The tickets were once again sold out within one minute, making him the first post-1990s singer in mainland China to hold a concert in that stadium with 90,000 audiences and the first to hold two concerts consecutively in that stadium. On December 12, Hua won Musician of the Year at Harper's Bazaar 2018 Men of the Year awards and Most Searched Across Asia at 2018 Yahoo Asia Buzz Awards.
2019–2020: Variety shows, New World, and concerts On January 1, 2019, "Hua Chenyu Studio Official" posted its first Weibo announcing the launch of Hua's own studio, which is still under EE-Media but operates independently. On January 5, it was announced Hua Chenyu would take part in Zhejiang TV's variety show Ace to Ace S4. On January 13, On May 21, he announced the 2019 Mars Concert would be held on November 2 in Shenzhen Baoan Stadium. On August 20, he was ranked 33rd on Forbes China Celebrity 100 in 2019.