From a Beijing Suburb, Vibrant Strings

Published on July 3, 2009 by brooks | This story has been viewed 82 times

DONGGAOCUN, China — Perhaps the only thing more aurally challenging than a roomful of novice violinists screeching their way through “Mary Had a Little Lamb” is a roomful of novice violinists screeching along on out-of-tune instruments.

“Stop,” Chen Yiming shouted to her students, an enthusiastic bunch, ages 8 to 47. “Can we please pay attention to our instruments and make sure they are tuned correctly?”

After a short break for adjustments, the cacophony resumed.

Violin fever has hit this drab rural township with hundreds of residents, young and old, picking up the bow as Donggaocun tries to position itself as the string instrument capital of China.

Once known primarily for its abundant peach harvest, the town, about an hour’s drive from downtown Beijing, has become one of the world’s most prodigious manufacturers of inexpensive cellos, violas, violins and double basses. Last year the town’s 9 factories and 150 small workshops made 250,000 instruments, most of them ending up in the hands of students in the United States, Britain and Germany.

The city fathers have taken to boasting that Donggaocun produces 30 percent of the world’s string instruments, although another town in southeast China, Xiqiao, makes a similar, if slightly more credible, claim.

Feng Yuankai, of the China Musical Instrument Association, said that Xiqiao, in Jiangsu Province, is still the top producer, but that Donggaocun, which opened its first factory in 1988, is catching up. “Even with the economic slowdown their output is growing very quickly,” he said, adding that Donggaocun is responsible for less than 20 percent of China’s violin market.

A disputed ranking, or the recent slump in orders, is not about to dent Donggaocun’s ambition of becoming China’s violin mecca. Last month, officials began promoting the creation of a tourist attraction they are calling China’s first “string instrument experience center.” When it opens this summer, Instrument City will include a museum of “world-famous” violins, a 500-seat concert hall, a musical fountain and what the vice mayor describes as a “folklore village.”

Then there was this spring’s annual peach blossom festival, which featured a violin extravaganza with 1,000 fiddlers taking to the stage. Even if about half of the players — those too green for public consumption — were asked to refrain from actually playing, the concert was an auditory tour de force.

Since 2006 the local education department has trained 40 teachers to become violinists so that every school in Donggaocun and surrounding communities can offer music instruction. Violins not only have become a driver of economic development, but also have elevated the town’s sense of itself, said Wang Junying, the department’s chief propaganda officer. “They have helped us become a more cultured and elegant place,” Ms. Wang said.

The workers at Beijing Hongsheng Yun Violin Instruments Company largely agree. Most of the factory’s employees used to work in the same building, a paper plant that belched out noxious smoke. But in their effort to clean Beijing’s air for the Summer Olympics last August, the authorities closed the plant and invested government money in violin production. Although 200 workers lost their job when the paper plant closed, the two dozen people who were hired back by the violin workshop earn nearly twice as much as they did before.

Among the workplace perks are free instruments for the children of employees. “Violins have made us richer, and they have raised our artistic awareness,” said Zhao Gangcai, who assembles violins six days a week and whose 13-year-old daughter recently started playing. “Her classmates think it’s cool, and now they want to learn, too.”

Some of Donggaocun’s most promising musicians end up in classes led by Ms. Chen, 28, a woman of inordinate patience who started playing the violin around the same time she began to talk. She rejects the reluctant and those with stubby fingers, although she does take a handful of adults whose zeal makes up for their lack of raw talent.

Few students match the eagerness of Song Wei, 47, a retired kindergarten teacher who gave up the accordion for the violin after her husband and uncle began making string instruments. She practices an hour or two each day, and several friends, also retirees, have also caught the violin bug, although they dare not play together. “The noise would be unbearable,” she said with a laugh. “My only goal is to play a nice song when I hear it and to make myself happy.”

Ms. Chen has loftier goals. She hopes to turn Donggaocun into a talent factory, although she cautioned that prodigies usually emerge from musically inclined families, which, she suggested, were in short supply in this largely rural township of 33,000. “I want this place to produce world-class musicians,” she said.

In the meantime, she is working on her 1-year-old daughter. A few weeks ago, she gingerly placed a violin in the girl’s hands, and the results were encouraging. “She knows how to hold it now,” Ms. Chen said. “I’m taking that as a good sign.”

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