Ma Tian Yu's bio

Ma Tianyu is a Mandopop artist who rose to fame after winning sixth place and "most popular" at the 2006 My Hero Competition, a Chinese talent competition. Since then, he has released two albums, a single, and an EP.

Ma has begun to act in various television dramas, which is greatly contributing to his rise in popularity.

Before My Hero

Ma Tianyu's mother died when he was five, and his father left the family while he was young. He lived with his grandparents and two older sisters until the age of sixteen. There, he helped his grandfather tend the family's cornfields. His two sisters both dropped out so that he could attend school. Even then, he had to skip one year of middle school because of lack of money. For a year, he worked for 150 Renminbi a month carrying water from one end of the town to the other.

After finishing middle school, at the age of sixteen, he went with his uncle to Beijing to sell meat. A year later, their marketplace was taken down, and they worked in various jobs.To avoid being a car mechanic, as his uncle wanted him to be, he ran away with seven jiao (one-tenth of a Yuan). After spending four fen (one-hundredth of a Yuan) on a copy of his residence ID card, Ma Tianyu found a job at a restaurant cleaning dishes. During this period of his life, Ma worked in numerous jobs, including as a car washer, cashier, waiter, kitchen helper, and seller of shaobing, mantou, Lamian, lamb chuanr, tofu, and soybean milk.

In 2006, while working as a clothing assistant for a magazine, Ma decided to apply for the Beijing Film Academy after suggestions by friends. To increase courage in preparation for the tests, he signed up for the My Hero competition. close