Known for boasting the beginnings of China’s Wu culture brought about Wuxi people’s reputation for being smart, making them an employer’s dream. That indeed spurred the region’s industrial development, but it also gave rise to their having a diverse range of interests, transcending age and culture, including an appreciation for the finer things in life, music in particular.
In downtown Wuxi along a commercial pedestrian street sits a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit. The ordinary home from Republican-era times appears ramshackle and almost forgotten, were it not for it sitting on the City’s most expensive piece of real estate. More notably, this was the birthplace of the greatest Erhu player ever to have lived.
A love child, Daoist priest and folk artist who died before being reputed as a legendary folk musician, A Bing (Hua Yanjun; 1893-1950) composed and performed over 270 pieces of folk music throughout his life. However, only six of his memorable works were ever recorded.
But circa 1925, A Bing lost sight in both his eyes, nevertheless setting out to make a living as a busker, with his wife Dong Cuidi assisting to his needs. That was to also help in the making of a legend. And in Wuxi later being officially recognised as national capital of China’s erhu culture.
Somewhat away from the downtown is to be found the Meicun Erhu Industrial Park that opened in 2020. Highlighting the town’s cultural tradition of erhu craftsmanship and spanning 1,000 square metres, the park integrates erhu workshops, cultural and creative stores, classrooms and much more.
A government backed initiative serving as a hub for promoting and preserving this intangible cultural heritage, visitors are fascinated to view the masters’ manipulation of the python skin that makes up the seal for the erhu’s sound box and the lengths of wood for its neck. Lucky attendees may even be treated to a performance, one in which they may come to be struck by the accessibility of the melodies therein, in that which is a stark contrast with those of many other traditional Chinese instruments.
If erhu at its heart is essentially pop music, then the harmonica so too has a place in the Chinese masses’ hearts, for its affordability and portability.
Dai Weihao is Vice General Manager of EastTop Harmonica which is also host to the Oriental Harmonica Museum, specialised in the preservation of harmonica culture.
Dai points out that there are only 19 producers of harmonicas in the entire world, of which fully six are to be found in Jiangyin of Wuxi.
Rightfully proud of a collection comprising 5,000 harmonicas, the EastTop’s credentials are also solidified by one Bai Yansheng who serves today as the company’s technology consultant. For it was Bai who led he and his two brothers to win for China a gold award in 1989’s second World Harmonica Competition in Trossingen, Germany. That trophy gets a pride of place in the Museum, as does a harmonica gifted to Deng Yingchao, wife of China’s first Premier Zhou Enlai, and that which is the world’s biggest harmonica, at 2.199 metres tall, weighing 51.91 kilograms. And yes, it is possible to play it.
Out with the piano; in with the harp
Away from the harmonicas of Jiangyin and the erhus of Meicun, more meticulous musical production processes are to be found in Wuxi’s Huishan Economic Development Zone.
It is there that the world’s premium harp maker, Salvi, has set up shop for what is in fact only its third production facility in the world, to cater to growing demand in the Asia region. That’s not only from orchestras and music schools, but also from parents, with plucking a harp now seen by an increasingly wealthy middle class as a more respectable alternative to tickling the ivories. Salvi’s cheapest lever harp produced in Wuxi sells for ¥30,000.
Here, some 34 supremely skilled craftspeople; from carpenters to tuners; churn out 1,000 hand made harps per year, entirely out of materials imported from all over the world, in the process bringing in ¥30 million. It’s all the more impressive a tally considering that just one harp takes a whole month to make. Meanwhile, somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of sales are comprised of such lever harps, which, being easier to learn, are ideal for children beginning a learning journey.
According to Gary Zhang, GM of Salvi Musical Instruments (Wuxi), his HQ back in Italy chose Wuxi for its unique musical culture, excellent logistical access to market and generous government support in setting up its facility which opened as recently as 2022.
Yet, hardware is one thing; software altogether another. For Wuxi people so too have song in their blood. That, in part, translates to older members of the fairer sex in Wuxi to be found dancing in troupes, as anywhere in China. But in Wuxi, they add song in to the mix.
The Canal Concert Hall, right beside the Grand Canal is home to the Wuxi Shanhe Choir, founded in 2000 as an amateur choir, named after its sponsor and comprising six troupes of different ages and characteristics from all walks of life. 300 people now make up the greater ensemble, who together have performed more than 1,000 works, accumulating in the process a rich repertoire and yielding outstanding results; 12 international gold medals and 28 of the domestic variety.
In Wuxi, music is multicultural, multi genre and multi generational
The choirs may the preserve of those more advancing in years, but the same cannot be said for opera, with Wuxi Opera one of the major opera genres in Jiangsu.
Dating from in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, Wuxi Opera was formed by the integration of mountain song, Daoism and the singing of propaganda scrolls in the countryside of Wuxi and neighbouring Changzhou. Accompanied by the erhu, lute, flute and percussion instruments, Wuxi Opera thrived to become popular all across the Lake Tai Basin.
At the Jiangnan Vocational College of Media Arts, youngsters queue seated as the audience, for their turn to audition in front of their peers and teachers for a part in an upcoming College opera production. Not far away, a student orchestra comprised entirely of traditional Chinese instruments is also put through its paces.
Wang Xiaohong with the School of Music & Dance points to more and more of today’s younger generations taking up such instruments.
According to Wang, previous generations may not have looked kindly upon those basing a career on a traditional Chinese instrument. But things are different today, with social media to thank. Post millennials today realise that dedication to the craft could land them a role in a TV series or a movie, together with all the accompanying social adoration. Their parents have not missed the point.
But Wang also freely admits that there remain more fringe Chinese traditional instruments perhaps close to extinction. The Erhu’s pop sensibilities may secure its future, but for instruments such as the Guqin, with its compositions reflecting more the abstract meanings of life or the human condition, an arguably less certain destiny awaits.
It’s a fact not lost on some of Wang’s students, gathering for themselves more lofty ideals in their recognising there is the risk of some such arts dying out, and assigning themselves as protectors to carry on the faith.
Back in the home of the Erhu, Lin Hui with the Meicun Sub District of Wuxi’s Xinwu District has also taken note on the phenomenon. And acted upon it. Lin too speaks of the youngsters studying the craft of Erhu to then live broadcast their progress from dedicated studios within the facility.
Elsewhere, their contemporaries are absorbing alternative music of altogether another style; western. Nestled in the waters of Lake Li that is part of Lake Tai, the Huxin Utopia-Yide Music Bookstore is home to a plethora of music-related books, many of them dedicated to 20th Century western music. With pages literally falling out as the most thumbed among them, a biography of brief trailblazers The Stone Roses who flirted with the limelight in 1989 stands out as an obscure and unlikely choice over which young Wuxinese might obsess. Niche, yes, but concrete evidence as to the importance of melodies in the Wuxi psyche.
Music is often a reflection of any era’s societal condition. With Meicun the indisputable capital of erhu in China and more and more youngsters now taking up the art, so too the once industrial hinterland of Wuxi has become somewhat synonymous with music for the masses. As those very smart people of the Wu would have known all along, it’s the very core of Chinese culture.
