In Chen Shen-chin, Hsien Chin's master instrument maker, it is evident how the practical role of production manager and the artistic one of instrument maker have harmonized. Sitting with his neighbor, a lumber yard manager, as he played host at a tea ceremony, Chen explained both how he came to play the dual role, and some of the intricacies of the business.
As a young man, Chen Shen-chin went to Japan for a few years training as a fine cabinetmaker. On his return to Taipei, musician friends (Chen himself being an accomplished amateur musician) coaxed him into making instruments, and he complied simply by working from samples. "Thirty years ago, there were very few instrument makers in Taiwan," he recalled. "That's why friends came to me—because they knew that I could work with wood. They gave me their old instruments as patterns, suggesting improvements, and from there I was on my own, since I had no teacher available from whom I could seek advice."
First he made a pipa, the Chinese mandolin, and with success in that line, other instruments were commissioned. But the work remained a sideline for a few years—a much loved hobby; musicians, unfortunately, were not usually in a financial position where they could pay well for all the time-consuming skilled work required in instrument making. Cabinetmaking remained his "rice bowl."
Shaping a soundboard—Not a job for the uncaring
In the last decade, demand for traditional Chinese musical instruments has increased dramatically in Taiwan; many schools began offering Chinese music classes, and many families attained the necessary affluence to purchase those instruments chosen for study by their children. To keep up with the orders, Chen applied the efficient management techniques he had learned at the furniture factories.
On the north side of the Hsin Chin Company's garden, stacks of timber await the production stream; on the south end, finished instruments are strung and tuned. Thirty skilled craftsmen machine and hand-finish, first the parts, then the final products. The line works on a lot production basis—a particular type of instrument being produced at one time, ensuring production efficiency.
Despite efficient planning, however, it is impossible to produce fine musical instruments without a huge input of man hours. The pipa, for example, is carved from two pieces of wood. The front piece is reasonably simple—a flat, ovoid sound board cut from the wood of the Chinese parasol tree or firminia. The back and neck, however, are hewn from a single piece of rosewood and can only be roughly shaped by machine, after which they must undergo a lot of hand chisel work and planning. The pipa, due to the mass of wood in its back section, is a surprisingly heavy instrument, a quality Chen says is essential for a good, well defined sound. It is a four-stringed plucked instrument, represented in Chinese orchestras and popular also for solo recitals.
Delicate parts are precision-processed
There are other plucked instruments: banjo-shaped but very different in tone are the yuan chin, pi chin, and yueh chin. The first two are four-stringed instruments with large soundboxes and quite deep tones. Most essential to the tone quality is a sound board, again made from the firminia tree, though the back of the soundbox may be shaped from quality plywood and the neck, of other good hardwoods. The pi chin and yueh chin are smaller and higher pitched.
Unique to the range of Chinese instruments is the design of the san hsien, a three-stringed plucked instrument. Its relatively small soundbox is in, roughly, a 20 x 330 cm rectangular shape, with the corners rounded. The hardwood frame is covered in snakeskin and connected to a meter-long ebony neck; it gives off a very high toned sound. The snakeskins used by Chen Shen-chin are Malaysian python, since Taiwan has few snakes which can provide skins of adequate size. San hsien are prominently used in the music of the north and northwest of China, particularly music which romanticizes the lives and battles of the famed Mongol horsemen.
The various instruments known as hu are typically the two-stringed type, played with a bowstring which passes between the two strings of the instrument. The soundbox, a wooden cylinder covered at one end by snakeskin, is bamboo in the simple erh hu and rosewood in the heavier nan hu, chung hu, and kao hu. In the modern process, the cylinder is made of rosewood strips, glued on edge into rough cylindrical shape and then turned on a lathe. The bow, a slender piece of hardwood, may be trained to shape while still growing on the tree. With its strings between those of the instrument they play, bow and instrument become integral.
A blend of these hu type instruments provides the backbone of the Chinese traditional orchestra's sound. But their original purpose was for solo use, and to back their thin tones in the orchestra, a new instrument has evolved—the pei ke hu, a four-stringed large instrument based on the design of the Western cello. Chen Shen-chin explained that only in the last decade, due to pressure from Chinese orchestras, has this become common. The soundbox structure is basically that of the hu, but its four strings are set like those of the cello; the bow is a cello bow. One problem in its manufacture is obtaining snakeskins sufficiently broad to stretch across the 40 cm diameter of the soundbox.
Before its release from the workbench, each instrument is tested for tone quality
Another instrumental product of the factory is the yang chin or Chinese zither. It is like a small tapering table with strings tensioned across its face. Two sticks with felt-hammer ends are employed to play it, giving off a light tinkling sound. It lacks the body necessary for orchestral use, but is beautiful when heard in recital, being especially well suited to melodic, wistful tunes.
The ku cheng or Chinese lute is the instrument of Chen Shen-chin's choice and naturally accounts for the majority of the factory's output.
On the other side of Taipei is the eleventh-story workshop of Wei Tao-mo and his brother—the Chinese Instrument Company, specializing in the manufacture of the ku cheng, the lute.
A student-level ku cheng may be worth around US$250; from there prices rise dramatically with quality. The making of high quality instruments—which account for about half of Wei's monthly production of more than 200 ku chengs, begins with cutting and selection of sound and backing boards from firminia wood. Taiwan has an ample supply of this wood from the mountains of the south, but the best must be imported from Canada. In the temperate climate, slower growth gives rise to narrower growth rings, which is desired more for appearance, really, than for influence on tone quality.
The finest instruments are art pieces themselves, as well as means to art
Cutting the soundboard involves technical problems, since it not only has a lateral curve, but a slight bend longitudinally. In a good ku cheng, it is essential to cut this shape rather than bend the wood. Wei believes that the stress bending puts on the grain alters the wood's resonance characteristics. To achieve the shape efficiently, Wei Tao-mo's brother designed and then had engineered a special saw and jig to cut the boards automatically. A low speed cut is necessary to keep the wood cool and resilient. The arc-shaped sawblade moves coordinately with a cam to create the longitudinal bend. Having guaranteed consistent soundboards, Wei then takes the design of the ku cheng one step further by using a duplicate of the soundboard as the backboard. For the regular ku cheng, you simply mount the soundboard on a rectangular box. Wei's design results in a cross section of equal depth across the note range, bringing up the midtones. He is well pleased with the results, and his original design is new favored by such great artists as Liou Shyr-ping and Jeng Der-yuan.
Wei Tao-mo likes to tell a story of the origin of the ku cheng (the Chinese character for cheng means struggle). Tradition has it that during the Chin Dynasty, scholar Wan Wu-yi made a 25-string lute for his two daughters. Both daughters so studied and loved the instrument, that jealousies arose. To settle their disputes, the story goes, Wan Wu-yi divided the lute in two—creating twelve and thirteen-string instruments. The thirteen-string lute later became the koto of Japan, and the twelve-string lute, the chia ya chin of Korea. Meanwhile, the lute of China has evolved principally into a sixteen-string instrument and a deep toned twenty-one string variety.
About thirty people are employed in the Wei brother's factory. Adjacent to their afterthought of an office, a team of six women fine-finishes and paints the instruments. Upstream, a woodcarver cuts decorative motifs for headboards and rosewood sides.
The soundboards come off the saw-bench 15 mm thick, and are then buzzed and planed, finally being handfinished to 10 mm or so.
Assembling the ku cheng is a job for the finest craftsmen. On the end of the production line, they are strung with stainless steel strings for the sixteen-string type, or wound-nylon strings for the twenty-one string type. Wei Tai-mo keeps a close watch over the shop, ever alert for the special combination of materials and fine craftsmanship that go into that once in a lifetime virtuoso instrument. Meanwhile, he finds great satisfaction in making lutes for the best musicians of Taiwan...and raising the eyebrows of ku cheng connoisseurs in Hongkong.
Apart from these larger-scale makers, there are several musical instrument specialists in Taiwan, some of them producing very high class products for a select clientele. The rising popularity of Chinese traditional music, both in China and overseas, should ensure that this craft will continue to prosper.