YANHE

YANHE (言和) is a Chinese VOCALOID developed formerly by Bplats, Inc. with MERCURY INC., under the YAMAHA Corporation, and was created in collaboration with Shanghai HENIAN. She was released in July 2013 for the VOCALOID3 engine. Her voice is provided by Seira Liu (劉セイラ / 劉婧犖; 刘婧荦; Liú Jìngluò), a Chinese voice actress who is able to speak Mandarin and Japanese.

YANHE is the grand winning entry of the second "VOCALOID™ CHINA" contest.

Concept
YANHE is described to be handsome on the outside, yet soft-hearted on the inside.

Her deep tone of voice was originally created for the supporting character, Zhiyu Moke, but this project had to be changed after YAMAHA was forced to remove his character rights after the actions of Shanghai HENIAN's former president, Ren Li.

Etymology
Yán (言) can mean "say" or "speech", while hé (和) can mean "peace", "harmonious", or "gentle". Thus, her name can be interpreted to mean "speak peace". Compare the Chinese idiom "shake hands and speak peace" (握手言和), which is used to describe when enemies cease fighting.

Appearance
The design was drawn by MQ and is part of the 'YANHE Project'.

YANHE, like Luo Tianyi before her, had her avatar chosen through a competition.

According to one of Shanghai HENIAN's websites, her appearance is described to be handsome as she has a tomboyish look and an androgynous sounding voice.

Relations

 * Luo Tianyi: fellow member of the Vsinger project
 * Yuezheng Ling: fellow member of the Vsinger project
 * Yuezheng Longya: fellow member of the Vsinger project
 * Zhiyu Moke: fellow member of the Vsinger project
 * Mo Qingxian: fellow member of the Vsinger project

Music featuring YANHE
Examples of usage

Marketing
YANHE had a similar marketing technique as Luo Tianyi and YOHIOloid; she was a fan-designed VOCALOID.

A second contest was held to see whose design would be the new image for the second Mandarin VOCALOID. It began on March 25, 2013 and ended at the end of April. On May 13, the 15 finalists were announced. The winning design, along with the 4 runner-ups, were announced June 6. YANHE had the most votes out of all 666 entries.

YANHE had an album revealed in June 2013 called The Stage 1. It was released on July 11, the same day her software was made available for purchase. The Stage 2 was released later in the year.

Trivia

 * YANHE's vocal was the 36th release for VOCALOID3 in total. The release assisted the VOCALOID3 engine into beating the record of 35 vocals released for VOCALOID2.
 * She is the first VOCALOID to break the pattern of a female voicebank releasing with a male counterpart as the first two VOCALOIDs of a set language.