Violin maker strings success over many years
Craftsman’s musical instruments are coveted by connoisseurs
Wang Zhenghua, 69, describes himself as a “sound sculptor” who carves melodies out of pieces of wood in Tianjin.
Fashioning finished violins from raw wood is far from easy. But Wang confidently takes charge of every stage of the process — from sourcing materials to molding, varnishing and tuning.
Some of his products use maple and pine imported from Switzerland.
“It takes at least 200 working hours to give life to a violin,” he said.
The instruments he makes are worth more than 100,000 yuan ($15,600) each, according to the violin association of China.
Wang was born into a teacher’s family in the port city of Tianjin in 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was founded.
For 40 years, he has made and repaired countless violins, and has observed many changes in China, including the country’s evolving attitudes toward Western music.
Wang has been fond of music since childhood, and during junior high school, he began learning the erhu, a Chinese stringed instrument. During that period, he also noticed a violin for the first time.
“I was immediately stunned by its gorgeous shape and beautiful tone, and decided I had to have one,” he recalled.
Few Chinese families had access to musical instruments back then, especially Western instruments like the violin, and Wang’s wish did not come true until he was 20. His father bought him his first violin at a pawnshop for 30 yuan — about a month’s salary for a teacher at that time.
“I just couldn’t hide my excitement and cycled miles from the village where I worked to pick it up,” recalled Wang, who had been sent to rural Tianjin as a zhiqing, or “sent-down youth”.
At the behest of Mao Zedong, more than 10 million were sent to the countryside in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s to work on farms. Wang volunteered to deliver fertilizer — a dirty, smelly, night duty that was hated by most, but which granted him free time during the day to practice the violin.
“I kept imitating the violinplaying pose while driving a donkey cart during work. After some sleep in the morning, I had the entire afternoon for practicing,” he said. He also turned to a violinist in the city for further instruction.
In 1976, a devastating earthquake struck neighboring Tangshan. Wang and his fellow workers moved into tents, where his violin cracked after days in the cold.
“I was depressed as my family had no spare money for a second one,” he said.
So he resolved to make his own using an awl, a file and sharp pieces of glass, which he found to be a good tool to form curves in the wood. “I kept smashing glass until I found the ideal shard shape.”
In making the violin, he had no instructor and only his broken one as an example, so it took him six months to finish.
Wang took the college entrance exam in the late 1970s, one of two applicants for a single vacancy at a violinmaking major at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music, and he failed.
While he was preparing to retake the exam the following year, Tianjin Opera and Dance Theater advertised for an instrument repairman for its symphony orchestra. “Few people could have done it,” he said.
Wang got the job when the municipal bureau of culture had his rural hukou (residential registration) converted to an urban one. Over the following 16 years, he repaired instruments at the theater, and became a self-taught master.
Since China opened its doors to the outside world in 1978, many people have traveled overseas. Wang wanted to join them to find out more about Western instruments and the skills involved in making them, but it would take him nearly two decades to do so.
Wang finally went to the United States in 1997, when a former apprentice of his found him a job at a music center in Washington.
Upon arrival, he was amazed by the high-rises and homes there.
But when he reached the music center, he had trouble gaining the confidence of his new colleagues at first.
“In the beginning, few thought a Chinese could fix a Western instrument ... that is, until I repaired a completely broken violin that none of them had even tried to repair,” Wang said.
Over the next decade, he worked with many top musicians and repaired thousands of violins in Washington.
He said he was surprised by the concert customs in the US. He once went to a symphony concert in casual clothes, only to find others were all in suits.
“The formal dress shows their respect for the music and is due to their education since childhood,” he said.
Wang came back to China to look after his ailing mother in 2007. He was as surprised as he was when he first landed in the US by the emerging highend violin market in his home country.
China’s expanding middle class has created a lucrative market for quality products, and a growing number of parents enroll their children in music and dance classes.
“In the past, few parents cared about anything other than academic performance,” he said.
Wang now runs a workshop in Tianjin that makes no more than 20 violins a year, all commissioned. His son works in IT and is unlikely to learn violin making.
“China has become the world’s largest violin producer. There are many people looking for quality violins,” Wang said. “I will teach whoever is interested.”