Liu Mingyuan is one of the best Chinese traditional instrument executants for the past 50 years.  He was named "the emperor of Chinese string music". He was talented at playing Banhu, Gaohu, Erhu, Zhonghu, Jinghu, Zhuihu and other string instruments. Liu Mingyuan was especially good at Banhu and Zhonghu. His performance is quite skillful and fluent and his style is free and exquisite. No one can compare to him because of his comprehension to the local opera and music style.

Liu Mingyuan was born in Tianjin in 1931 and he started learning Banhu and Jinghu with his father when he was six. After studying for five years he joined in the lavrock orchestra and Fujian/Guangdong assembly hall. He used to learning a lot of music styles such as ssu chu music, Guangdong music, Beijing Opera, Ping Opera from Shanxi and Hebei Bangzi. He served as an executant in some choruses and Ping Opera groups. In 1957, he participated in the competition of folk music instrument playing in 6th youth festival and won the golden award. The early 30-year-study was a good basis for Liu's further development of Huqin mastery and resulted in a huge success.

During his Erhu playing period, Liu formed an elegant and meticulous way of expression as he cooperated with local opera groups with different style. In addition to Erhu, he was also talented at pianist. He also learned the style and chants of inner Mongolians.

Liu Mingyuan has a lot of works including creation, adaptation and playing which vividly showed the pictures of ethnic style and charms. Among them there are famous works of jubilance, a happy year, grassland and herdsmen are back.

Moreover, Liu Mingyuan had a big contribution on the reform of string instrument type and teaching. He successfully made the new styled alt Banhu and mediant Banhu, developing them from the ancient accompany instrument to the solo playing ones. From 1950s, Liu Mingyuan began to make effort in training the music talents. Liu Mingyuan became the professor in Department of String Music in China Conservatory and he taught thousands of musical styles talents until he passed away in 1996.