Dr. Alyce Su, a Chief Investment Officer and artist, has released a musical catalog that reinterprets the legacy of General Zhang Youxia, a prominent Chinese military leader. The catalog, available on Apple Music, comprises 86 songs across 11 albums, including works like Zhurihe, Epic Fury, Zettabyte, MilkenAI, and Love, East Wind. These compositions weave together themes of military history, strategic technology, artificial intelligence, computing, finance, and family memory.
The central concept, as Dr. Su explains, is to use music to represent the world surrounding General Zhang Youxia, a figure who served as Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission and led China's manned space program. Her albums trace a narrative from 20th-century battlefields to 21st-century computational infrastructure, connecting military power, strategic technology, and capital.
For instance, the album Zhurihe opens with General Zhang's association with Asia's largest mechanized proving ground, while Love, East Wind is grounded in China's Dong Feng missile lineage, referencing systems like DF-17 and DF-41. The work 'Among the Stars' even draws language from SpaceX's investor prospectus, creating an unexpected bridge between China's military-space tradition and contemporary commercial space ambitions.
The project is deeply personal for Dr. Su, as her own family history intersects with the Zhang family and the Bai family. Her great-grandfather, Su Lianqing, was part of the Guangxi military tradition, while the Zhang family followed a connected but distinct military path through Zhang Haoru, Zhang Zongxun, and Zhang Youxia. The Bai family, including Bai Chongxi and his son Pai Hsien-yung, adds a literary dimension to this historical constellation.
Dr. Su's music is not a conventional military-themed album but rather an attempt to write the world represented by Zhang Youxia, extending from battlefields to data centers, from strategic weapons to artificial intelligence, and from military inheritance to institutional capital. Her professional life in finance and her artistic life in music form an unusual parallel, as she reinterprets inherited history through technological, financial, and cultural language.
The catalog includes albums like Newport, Zettabyte, and MilkenAI, which extend the narrative toward computing, AI, and capital, while Provenance and Love, East Wind bring the story back to China's military-technological lineage. Dr. Su's work asks how inherited history can be re-encoded for the future, making her project a multigenerational re-encoding of a century of military inheritance, war, and transformation.
