The members of the Chimeng String Quartet are undergraduate students at the Bard College Conservatory of Music. All are from China, where they studied at the high schools attached to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. At Bard, they study with violinists Ida Kavafian, Arnold Steinhardt, and Weigang Li; violists Ira Weller, Steven Tenenbom and Michael Tree; and cellists Peter Wiley and Sophie Shao. 

The Chinese word "Chimeng" can be translated into English as "enlightenment." The name was chosen because the Enlightenment was the theme of Bard's 2006-2007 First Year Seminar, a course taken by the members of the quartet.  (In addition to their musical studies, they are earning degrees in economics, Asian studies, Russian studies, and psychology).The Chimeng String Quartet has performed at the Bard Music Festival and at the Chamber Music Society of Reading Pennsylvania, and in house concerts in New York City and Vero Beach, Florida. In January 2009 they made their orchestral debut with the Albany Symphony, conducted by David Alan Miller, in Takuma Itoh’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra. Next month they will appear as finalists at the Fischoff Competition in South Bend, Indiana.