Yang was born in Beijing. She began playing the guitar at the age of seven, and started to receive formal instruction when she was ten, studying under the guitarist Chen Zhi, later Chairman of the China Classical Guitar Society. Her public debut came at the First China International Guitar Festival, where she met with immediate acclaim. At the same time, Yang was presented with her first foreign guitar (a "Pepe" children's guitar from Aria), by the celebrated Japanese guitar maker Masaru Kohno. She went on to take second prize at the Beijing Senior Guitar competition, being the only child competitor, aged eleven.

As a schoolgirl, Yang rapidly achieved an international reputation, playing extensively in China, Hong Kong, Macau, Spain, and Australia, and giving concert tours in Taiwan, Japan and Portugal. At twelve, she played in Tokyo for the first time, and was given a special award by the Guitar Alliance of Japan; this time, Masaru Kohno took Yang to his studio and let her have her pick from among his world-renowned concert guitars. She would play the Kohno guitar, made of cedar and jacaranda, regularly over the next five years. During her Madrid debut at age 14, the composer Joaquín Rodrigo was in the audience; in 1995, after John Williams heard her play in Beijing, he was so impressed that he gave two of his own Greg Smallman guitars to her conservatory, for her and other top students to play.