Xiaowen was born and raised in Shenyang, China, where she part of a competitive chorus team, singing traditional children’s music. She then attended college in Liaoning University, where she studied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. However, she was more serious about her singing and dancing career than her science until the end college, when she began planning for graduate school. She then attended SUNY-Buffalo for graduate school, doing her PhD work with Matthew Xu-Friedman. There, she studied