Chapter 14: The Third Stage of Learning the Violin
From an amateur to professional
It was a long way from my workplace to the head office of the company. I paddled my bike as hard as I could all the way down, fantasizing all the possible bad things and self-defense excuses. When I arrived at the gate of the head office out of breath, the always-arrogant doorman abnormal politely led me to a meeting room, where sat around a meeting table a group of company leaders. Seeing me appeared at the door everyone stood up facing me. That overwhelming atmosphere made me feel being mistakenly favored without rhyme or reason.
To make a long story short, the company informed me all my papers were transferred away from the company, and from then on, I was a member of the Hunan Beijing Opera. The one who made the speech stressed, “It is our company’s pride that we raised such a talent.” He said that naturally, shamelessly and with great satisfaction. Thanks God no one really paid attention to his hot air, as all were busy eating fish skinned peanuts and drinking tea. When someone proposed that the celebration deserving a few bottles and dishes, the speaker ordered me to report myself to the Opera straight away.
Is it some kind of joke? I simply could not believe my ears. Thinking back from school to then, I took countless auditions just to get into a performing group, any group that might take me. Each time after the family political record checkup, all ended up the same result “regret”. After the same thing repeated to me again and again, I had already got used to the failure and accepted the fact that I could never be able to make myself to be a member of any professional music group. Yet the acceptance of the Hunan Beijing Opera, the highest level in the province, came to me so suddenly, especially, without an audition!
Looking at the dirty oily working uniform, smelly army shoes with holes that wrapped my body and feet, and worse I couldn’t remember how many days ago I had my shower. I should be all right if it was within a week. For such an appearance how could I go see teacher Yu?
Nevertheless, an order is an order, as the Chinese says, “a military order is like a falling mountain in no way to disobey.” I ran to a washroom to clean me up a little but turned to be in vain as there was no mirror and no water out from the tap. I just wiped my face with a self brought toilet paper (there was no toilet supplying system in China at that time), and shaped my hair a little with the water from my mouth, and then on my bike again heading to the Hunan Beijing Opera wildly.
Wretched and breathless I reached the front gate of the Opera. Even before I finished my self-introduction to the gateman, he pointed a big rehearsal hall and said, “Just go. Everybody is there.” That confirmed the unbelievable news, “I was made a member of the Opera.” With extraordinary high spirit I flew to the rehearsal hall.
When I rushed into the rehearse hall with huge smile I was more terrified than astonished to see what was going on inside.
(CM)
There were eight portraits hung on the wall. In front of the portraits the whole member of the Opera were sitting on the ground, crying, sobbing, weeping and sighing. The ones who made the most sound must be the family members of the dead, among them teacher Yu’s pretty elegant wife and their little boy. I looked up at the portraits again; the familiar face of teacher Yu with a little cold smile appeared. Oh, my Chairman Mao!
An administrator came to me and took me out of the sea of tears to another office building.
“Everybody calls me secretary Deng.” He introduced himself with a friendly smile. Then turned into a very serious vein, briefly told me how that unbelievable tragedy had occurred to the Opera.
It happened during the Opera went countryside to give some performances. When they took a boat across the Dongting Lake, the largest lake in Hunan province, the boat turned over in the middle of its way. “We lost eight comrades, include your teacher Yu.” Deng narrated with tears running out.
“But, but my teacher is very good at swimming, he even have a nick name called ‘duck’, how could a duck get drowned?” My question remained unanswered, as it was unanswerable. Secretary Deng then told me it was teacher Yu’s wife recommended me, for according to the policy, the families who lost their loved ones could have one from the family to take over the job position, as teacher Yu’s son was too small I became the luck one.
A teacher’s life for a student’s new life, even if it was God will, isn’t the will being a little too cruel?
It shouldn’t hard to imagine how complicated my feeling was, the sadness of my teacher’s death; the sorrow for his family; the gratefulness for the recommendation of the wife; and last but not the least, the excitement of the change of my destiny.
The same day after the gathering I went to see the wife with a great grief on my face. But the wife appeared rather calm. I expressed my compassion and gratitude, and offered my help, any help that within my ability since my teacher was gone.
“Since your teacher is gone,” she followed my words, “it is meaningless for us to go on living here. Therefore we will soon move back to Beijing.” The wife thanked me the same, and then handed a few violin music scores that were prepared on the piano to me, included Rode that the teacher once lent to me.
That was the last time I saw the pretty wife of my teacher’s.
On the second morning, after hesitation I went to my workplace as usual, for besides I should say good-bye to my work mates I needed to finish the cement fence to the panda house at the Zoo. It was urgent. To my surprise when I arrived at my work place all my fellow workers gathered waiting to give me a farewell party. And the organizer was the long-time-no-see Uncle Feng. Every body talked in turn about my kindness and good things I had done to the company as well as to them, with the most I either didn’t know or forgotten, such as I took over heavy jobs for the women and the olds; I read new papers for every one during the political study hours. One old man narrated with tears about how I walked extra distance to accompany him to a bus stop in a rainy day with my umbrella. His moving tone made quite a few others running at their noses too.
Ah, people, I mean Chinese people, why have to wait until someone is leaving, or dead, all the good part be seen and mentioned?
After the party I accomplished those cements flower baluster. Thought of my last “works” I outreached my attention and skills.
About 30 years later, I went to the zoo and saw my “works” still standing firmly between pandas and their viewers.
The year 1974, marked a millstone of my life after 4-year working at the construction company, stepped into a new world, a world of being a professional violinist that I dreamed of for years.
Pursue my violin studies towards higher lever
Moved into the dormitory of the Opera, the 20-year old me, being called as the “Nine Brother” first time in my life had a key to a room and in the room a bed that belonged to me only. More exciting, a professional violin, not the 400 RMB lever that Duguo had at the City Opera, but a 800 RMB, the eight grade, the highest grade violin made in the Shanghai violin factory.
Yet the “eight grade” soon lost it’s satisfactory to me as I remembered that my teacher Yu used to play on an old German violin, which was being repaired in Shanghai because of wet in the water together with her master. And there was something else than my teacher’s German violin that I wanted more badly, which is my teacher’s position, the seat of the concertmaster of the orchestra.
Not very long after I got into the Opera, my girl friend Zhenghua’s mother forced her to break up with me, as I had turned myself from a worker (working class was the most respectable class at that time) into an entertainer. With the heavy pressure of a “single daughter”, and with her eyes closed Zhenghua married to some worker arranged by her mother.
It was quite a period of time I had no girl friend as I had to concentrate all me energy and time to my violin studies. However, I had no girl friend did not mean that I had no sexual activities, for Meimei, known as my sister came to see me regularly. Who cares what the brother and sister was doing with the door locked from inside.
From the channel of Meimei, I learnt that my mother remained no change and living a life like a clock doing exactly the same circling everyday. On the other hand, my father had been brought back from the 5.7 Cadre School (countryside) to his original work unit (city). As to my elder brother Danjin, after had done three-year hard labor building railways as one of thousands of the “volunteers”, he also came back home. Thanks to his special interest in photography that contributed a great deal to the regional new paper during the three-year period he was assigned to the photographic department of the Hunan Medical University (Part of the old and present Yell University), and he was from then till today, working at the same building where he was jailed for about a month. What a joke of “not knowing whether to laugh or cry” the fate is playing on him! But information regarding my youngest brother Danfeng was inadequate.
I did meet Danfeng once. It was at a political gathering of all performing units of the Hunan province. The acrobat unit was beside our Beijing Opera. I kept searching head by head and finally I found my little brother who was no longer little but rather a muscled man. The very moment I caught my eye at him I discovered he was actually looking at me. When our four eyes met he revealed a little excited and uneasy. I took the roll of breaking the ice by waving at him, while he regretted, immediately turned his face away from me and never turned back.
Because of my struggling for the seat of the concertmaster of the orchestra, in addition to the piles of my shortcomings and problems, such as my maternal genetic problem of “never get along with people”, made me among the most unpleasant persons at the Opera. Meetings of “criticizing and helping” were frequently serviced for me. All the merit about me seemed to be only one, “great and extreme endeavor on practicing the violin.”
That was entirely true that I devoted almost all of myself to the violin. I was really “keeping my nose to the grindstone”, went mad practicing my violin. Every morning my violin sounded out there mixing with the young singers’ “Yiyiyi, a-a-a” before the crack of dawn.
For my further studies, the Opera arrange me a violin teacher from the provincial music school, a small lady named Guo Shumin, who was one of the very a few full-qualified professional violin teachers in the province.
If I am allowed to tell the truth, the period of studies with teacher Guo was as dull and bitter to me as to her. As to me, to play the violin was no longer “for fun”; the purpose was only to satisfy my feelings, but a serious and rational job. The violin was just a tool. The importance was not my affection but intonation, rhythm and techniques. That kind of playing the violin suppressed my musical enthusiasm and changed the flavor of my musical style. As to teacher Guo, her headache was to reshape an amateur fancier to a professional performer. That was just like to train a wild horse to be a gentle pet.
“Teacher Guo, why do you only give me all these dull and tasteless etudes? It made my feelings blocked in the middle of my throat and couldn’t get out.” I inquired dissatisfiedly.
“Hahaha,” Teacher Guo laughed, in a way worse than crying. She explained, “That is exactly where your problem is, too much feelings and too little reason. To teach you how to play the violin, is like a doctor cue a patient, only strong and bitter medicine could help you to get rid of your bad amateur habit.”
As a violinist, even playing the violin became a dull business, what else could be worse? Would you imagine, not only my violin was a tool, but also me, the performer had to become a tool, “a tool of uniting the people and fighting the enemy” as Mao ordered, every-day-work was to play those incomprehensible “revolutionary model Beijing opera”, and off work was to practice all those boring etudes. Allow me to make a rather vulgar yet vivid parable. No matter how crazy one likes sex, when lovemaking becomes one’s occupation, a job, and one couldn’t make a living without doing it for 8 hours each day, how long could it keep one going on to like sex? Therefore after a period of such life, hand copy scores, rehearses, performances, as soon as the working hour was over, I threw the violin away and never wanted to touch it. I remember once my brother one of Danjin’s best friends got married, during the wedding someone suggested that I gave a little entertainment by playing the violin. If it had been before that would have been my favorite opportunity to show off. But on that particular day I responded coldly, “My working hour is over.” When I write here it reminds me an article that says “anything you enjoy doing stay as an amateur.”
Two years with the opera had past, I felt un-explainable low and lost, not only I still did not get the position as the concertmaster that I so much wanted to at the beginning, but more importantly I lost the goal or even the meaning of life. I wrote in my dairy “When a withered person in a desert discovered an oasis, and used his last strength to reach it, then found himself stuck in a marsh covered up by the oasis, how despair he could be?” This perhaps, is a vivid description of my frame of mind at that time. Hence, I was in need to change my life and re-adjust myself mentally for a while.
It was at that moment an opportunity fell into my lap. In 1977 I did something I father had been doing for decades that was to watch the peasants at countryside as one of the Communist Party representatives, although I was no Party member, in fact, a planet far away from it. It was in that year I experienced rock-bottom life of the Chinese society that later influenced my change of the view to the society tremendously. My other novel with the title “Under the Banana Tree” had detailed description about my experience and observation of the year.
1978, with hand-made cotton shoes and a bamboo pack bag I returned to my work place, the Hunan Beijing Opera. Also with suntanned skin and rough hands I was given the old German violin that used to belong to my teacher Yu as well as his position, the concertmaster of the orchestra, the position I had fought for two years couldn’t get but came to me like a cup of tea. Therefore I felt the position was some kind of reward to my hard and outstanding work at the countryside, which gave me little pleasure and satisfaction of achievement.
Being seated on the first chair I soon realize that I was inadequate in the position. First of all, I knew very little about Beijing opera. Secondly I was far lack of orchestra experience. As the matter of fact, my personality and violin playing style were not at all suitable to be in an orchestra, which have been proved later in several western countries.
Encounter Ma Xiaomao again
One day, I was out to have something to eat, and happened to catch a sight of a very similar face by the bus stop. “Very similar” might not be very accurate as the face was much darker than what I remembered. However, I wasn’t wrong for the face greeted me.
“Ma Xiaomao, I thought you went to Xinjiang. Why are you here?” I was truly surprised.
Xiaomao gave a pale smile as an answer. During the interlude for the bus, she told me that the life at Xinjiang construction was much too hard for her and absolutely not a place she could survive. But Flute Chen insisted that “the more bitter place the more revolutionary he would become” and was unthinkable to be a deserter. In that case Xiaomao had to escape there and got back all by herself. Meanwhile, she was working at a candy factory.
“Poor Flute Chen, he gave up going to the army with all the others and chose Xingjiang because of you. But now you left him alone…”
“Don’t you worry, he said as soon as I leave him he would find a Xingjian girl and rooted there.” With a sour tone Xiaomao uttered that with resentment. To break the awkwardness she changed the subject to someone else, told me that Wang Shiyi’s father was liberated, and returned back his old job as a professor of the Hunan Medical University. And Wang Shiyi himself was given a very job after his high school graduation.
“How is Luying.” I urgently asked.
“She became a elementary school teacher.”
“No,no,no, I mean how is Luying and Wang Shiyi?” I asked again very impatiently.
“You really don’t know nothing, do you?” Xiaomao laughed. After stretched her suspense long enough she told me that they two were about to get married.
“Re..ally! congratula..tions.”
The bus was approaching.
“If there is something I can do to help, please come to me.” I shouted at her back, with a feeling of superiority.
“What can you possibly do for me? You know I give up the violin a long time ago.” She said that without turning her head, only raised her hand and waved meaning “good-bye”, if not meaning “get out”.
Ma Xiaomao, used to be a fragile and delicate flower in my memory, then much withered.
My dream of becoming No 1 violinist of the Hunan province came true
Along with the down of the “gang of four”, (Mao’s hard lines with Mao’s wife Jiangqing in it, was crushed soon after Mao’s death), the entire model Beijing operas vanished together with their maker. The Beijing opera went back to the style of its old days. The western orchestra was no longer in need. That means we were all going to be out of job.
It was at that crucial moment, the composer of the province Liu created a symphonic Beijing opera in praising the Premier Zhou, which a full western orchestra was needed. For that we had to combine the orchestra of the provincial Sing and Dance unit as well as the City Opera where I used to go visiting Duguo during my school years, and conductor Xiao was pointed to be the conductor for the show.
As the show was Beijing opera, our orchestra functioned the backbone, and I, the concertmaster of our small orchestra was naturally put to the position as the concertmaster of the whole orchestra. Seeing all the violinists were sitting behind me, especially Duguo was sitting far, far behind me, the vivid expression “walking two feet off the ground” was not enough to describe my satisfaction and exultation. When conductor Xiao appeared in front of the orchestra it reminded me of the letter I wrote to him at my school year “I swear to you that someday I will become the No 1 violinist …and you will have to lead your orchestra crawling and rolling to follow my rhythm”, which I felt like to shout out once more in his face.
Xiao was the conductor of the city opera, a rank lower than the provincial orchestra, which became the reason of being looked down and teased by a few young musicians by intentionally playing wrong notes, or delaying half a beat to come out to see whether xiao was able to find out. That made the pearls on the top of Xiao’s head bigger and brighter than ever under the spotlight.
Facing all these I was amused and happy with the sense that my resentment being revenged, and totally forgotten the seat I was sitting on in the orchestra, until my feet were trampled next to cripple by my co-player sitting next to me, I changed my attitude supporting the conductor and criticizing the naughty ones.
During the intermission I went to conductor Xiao to show my sympathy and warmth, but received cold response in return. Later someone told me that Xiao was not at all happy with me on the seat, not because I did not stop the naughty ones in time and support him in full, but my inadequacy of ability to be in that position. “Even the concertmaster is a cripple in rhythm, how could my left hand be healthy.”
I was outraged by hearing the rumor, thought such a “to return viciousness for favor” person must be punished. While I had no chance to do so as he quitted himself before that. Ironically, this time it was he who left a notice to me saying “I’ll pursue my study from now on and I promise you someday I will be the No 1 conductor of the Hunan province.
That show was huge; in fact the biggest in the Hunan stage history. It took place at the Hunan Theater. The media, TV new papers, all present. I send three tickets home hoping my father would come to see my glory on the stage. But only mother, Danjin and Memei showed up, and past me the message that the father was not interested in Beijing opera. In reality he went to buy a cheapest black and white TV set and took it home with his bicycle when I was on the stage playing. When mother and Danjin went back home after the show, father was still sweating adjusting the antenna and the channel of the TV set.
“The show is already over.” My brother said to my father.
“Get lost. I’m not tuning for the show.” My father said impatiently.
According to my observations, father is not easy to be impatient under normal circumstance.
Shasha, one of the girls who influenced to my life most
During the process of rehearsal and performances of the symphonic Beijing opera, I got acquainted with a mezzo-soprano named Shasha of the provincial singing and dance unit. Shasha was a girl much taller and larger than the average Chinese girls, and more elegant than beautiful. If it weren’t her who took the initially, me, the little nine brother would never have dreamed to walk shoulder to shoulder with her on the street.
It was a evening after the rehearsal I stayed all by myself in a small practice room doing extra excise on my violin as I did very often. The door was pushed open. Shasha walked in, into my life. After a short conversation, asking me whether I had a girl friend, she lay herself flat on the piano chair…
Two months later when we went shopping together, Shasha suddenly felt uneasy, and she used her right hand to cover her stomach and left hand gesturing me not to follow her. She vomited at the gutter by the road. That action did not corresponded with her elegancy at all. I was puzzled without knowing what to do. The next morning as soon as the rehearsal was over she came to me and said to me mysteriously, “I’ve been to the hospital.”
“What disease?” I asked anxiously.
“Not disease, instead, I have happiness.” She said coldly.
“What happiness?” At that time I really didn’t know what connotation of the Chinese expression “I have happiness.”
“All thanks to you. Congratulations.” Her tone revealed a uneasiness and regret. See me still didn’t get her meaning she whispered to my ear, “I am p-r-e-g-n-a-n-t.”
“Wha!!!t?”
The sacrifice of my child and Xiaoxiao
Sex before marriage, in that year’s China, not only a disgraceful morally, but also a crime legally. Heard Shasha saying that she was pregnant, I had a mixed feeling of excitement as well as anxiety. I counted the notes until the rehearsal was over, and the rehearsal hall left two of us.
“What should we do?” I asked.
“What do you think what we should do?” she kicked the ball back to me.
“Get married.” I answered without much thinking.
“Get married?” Shasha doubled the size of her eyes, a blush flitted her cheeks with excitant, and quietly she turned her tone like a little mother, “Get married. What an easy way out! How about your future.”
“What future?” I didn’t understand what she was talking about.
“What future? Your future. You are a young man of 20s, in the prime of your life. What do you do if you don’t pursuer your studies for your higher goal.” She went a little indignant.
“Oh, you mean that. But I’m already goaled. You see, I’m sitting on the first seat of the whole province. This is my utmost goal. I have no more goal.” I answered honestly.
“Look, listen, how great to sit on the first chair of the province, the Hunan province, a place even birds wouldn’t shit.
Ai, forget it. I take it as if I got a wrong person.” Shasha shacked her head and stood up, looked like “hating the iron doesn’t become steel”, he added, “You, a bonehead.”
“Want do you want me to do then.” I suddenly felt an urgent need to go to the man’s.
“People going up, Water going down. Have you heard that?” Shasha stared at me with a slight of hope, “What can you achieve in such insignificant place like Changsha? You should go to Shanghai, go to bigger and greater places. I heard a teacher from Shanghai conservatory would come to Changsha for new students. You should prepare yourself for the opportunity.” For this Chain of conversation, I felt she sounded more like a grandma than a mother.
“But, your…I mean our…” I pointed at her stomach.
“You mean Xiaoxiao.” She blushed again, and me too, for she had already given a name for the little thing, without consulting me. She went on, “The Xiaoxiao issuer you leave it to me. I’ll work ways out. You do what you should, and I do mine.” Shasha walked to the doorway, and then stopped, turned round to me, “You have a brother working at the medical university, don’t you?”
By that time in China, abortion required a certificate from work unit one belonged to, except, going through a “back door”.
A week later, I accompanied Shasha to the hospital attached to the medical university where Danjin was working.
When I waited in the hall I saw my brother Danjin supported Meimei with her hand coming out from the same direction Shasha just went in.
“What are you doing here?” I asked spontaneously without thinking.
“Nothing, stomachache.” She smiled, bitterly.
It was many years later I learnt XiaoXiao wasn’t my first child as he or she had a ender brother, if not a sister.
Danjin said he had to leave and asked me to look after Meimei for a while. When Shasha came out I rushed up and help her very carefully walking to the resting chairs. Shasha looked at Meimei and asked me, “Who is she, and why she is here.”
“My relative, happened to be here with my brother, nothing to do with me.” I explained very lightly.
Watching me took Shasha’s arm and walking away, Meimei give me a smiled again, a much bitter smile.
Shasha walked her steps heavily and repeated, “Go go go, go to study in Shanghai, as soon as you can.”
Shanghai, a vast city far away, is the place for me, the little Nine Brother, a Hunan bumpkin to go?
The fail of entrance examination of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music
1978 was the first time the Chinese art and music academies openly recruiting new students after the Cultural Revolution. The Shanghai music conservatory sent a famous professor Sheng Zhonghua, (the sister of Sheng Zhongguo who was supposed to be the No 1 violinist in China) to Hunan to recruit new students. My teacher Go, as the violin teacher of the province went to see her at the station with most of her students, including me, the little Nine Brother.
As soon as the train stopped we saw professor Sheng waving her hand walked down from the carriage. The elegant appearance of VIP left me a deep impression. Off the train the pro was surround by us. Teacher Go introduced us one by one, and the professor shook hands with us one after another. Although the professor acted politely she looked a little lost. When it came to my turn she suddenly uttered, “Did I forget something on the train?”
“Violin.” Teacher Go responded, “You can’t come without your violin, can you?”
“Right right right, my violin.” The Pro rushed back to the carriage and returned with her violin. When I stretched my hand waiting for my turn of shaking hands, she thought I was offering my help to carry her violin.
“How nice and thoughtful of you.” She praised me with her violin on my hand.
On the way to the hotel the professor still looked somewhat absence minded, and all the questions to her were went in one ear and out the other. Go stopped us and asked her again, “Calm down and think once more, is there something else left on the train?
“Violin, suitcase, handbag, shoes hat, and no more.” Sheng nodded her head rather firmly, but she added, “It should be everything and no more” with a tone obviously persuading no one but herself.
After we said good-bye at the hotel front and walked out, we were all spontaneously talking bout our impression on the professor. When I made my bold remark, “The professor acted like a fly without head”, the professor rushed out and shouted, “I forgot…forgot…” she was out of breath.
“Calm down, and take a deep breath, and now tell us forgot what?” Teacher Go asked with her hand petting the pro’s shoulder.
“I forgot… Oh my God, I left my daughter on the train. She was sleeping, that’s how I forgot.”
What an artist, and, a mother! Hahaha!!!
…
The audition took place on next morning. When we one after another playing our violins on the stage, Professor Sheng was with her presbyopic glasses on her nose and kept her eyes down on her lap. I wondered why and had a peep. Oh my Chairman Mao! She was read a music score, the violin concert “Butterfly Lovers”, the only known Chinese violin concert in the entire Chinese violin music history.
Later I found the whole thing was a formality, as that year, and every year from then on, the Shanghai Conservatory of music took only a few violin students, and the position was taken before any audition took place. A place like Hunan, “a place even birds wouldn’t shit” as Shasha remarked, had no chance what so ever at the very beginning. That’s why the professor wanted to make the most out of the trip by giving a recital in Hunan, the place her mother was from.
Therefore a chance landed into my lap. It happened when Sheng had her rehearsal with the orchestra, her violin opened at a side, which occurs often when the instrument being brought to a different place with different whether condition and humility. The noise from the opening of the violin irritated her so much that she had to stop at the middle of the rehearsal. Then I told the professor that it was a huge problem to her but a cup of tea to me as I made a violin once from scratch.
After the concert, besides teacher Go I was the only student asked to see the professor off the station.
Waiting for the train to come the professor complaint that there were too few violinmakers and repairers in the country. The her eyes lit up, said, “Oh yes, now I remember that the director of the conservatory, professor Tang is making a new course of violinmaking. He asked me to put a eye on talented people if I meet. I could recommend you if you are interested.” Seeing me not so interested she added, “Of course the violin making students also learn to play to violin. As far as you are in Shanghai, with a small charge, you could also take private lesion from me.”
Teacher Go made no obvious response. But from her face I knew she at least did not oppose the idea. She waited for my response. Yet I made no response. How could I respond? I made a white ugly violin at the age 14 purely due to lack of money. The purpose of making that violin was to play violin. But then I had an old German violin in my hand and the seat of the concertmaster sitting, what an earth is that I go back to learn how to make violins.
There was a gap of silence until the train was coming. I carried her luggage and teacher Go took her violin, and the professor herself was holding her daughter so tightly that the 8-year girl screaming for pain.
Unexpectedly Shasha thought it was a great idea and opportunity that I go Shanghai as a violinmaking student. She even said, “In fact, it might be more suitable for you to be a violinmaker than a violin player. Believe me you might have a brighter future by changing your profession now.”
To me it sounded more an insult than an encouragement. I shouted at her with chagrin, “You go to be a violinmaker, or whatever maker you are fancy to be. I swear I want to be a violinist, a good and famous violinist.”
The end of the Hunan Beijing Opera Orchestra and the beginning of the Hunan Radio & TV Orchestra
In 1978, the huge symphonic Beijing opera in praising the Premier Zhou marked as the “momentary recovery of consciousness just before death” of our orchestra. Soon after the concert, not only us, but the western orchestras of all Beijing operas nation wide were disbanded. Where to go was a problem placed before every one of the orchestra members. Hence, as the old Chinese saying “the eight deities cross the sea each applies one’s own theurgy” we all had to find a way out for oneself. Some went to the orchestra belonging to the singing and dance unit, and a few went to the Hunan film manufacture studio, and also a part of us gave up music career and start something totally new.
As regard to me, besides escaping the challenge I also wanted to escape from the city that I had lived all my 24-year-life and started to be tired of it. I choose Guilin, a little place of natural beauty known as the Xanadu. The local Singing and Dance Orchestra accepted my application on the spot and with the offer of the concertmaster. Yet, as the same time all my personal papers were already transferred to another unit without a consultation with the man the papers belonged to.
It happened at the same period of time the new Hunan Radio & TV Orchestra was established, the majority of the musicians from our Beijing Opera were transferred to it, included me.
It was Li, the head of the Hunan Radio and TV (should be “CEO” in the west) received me when I went to enquiring why. He used his official jargon in a rather soft tone, said, “The rapid development of the radio and TV require us to establish a orchestra.” Followed he made known the solid financial resource that would provide the best quality musical instruments and best training of the musicians, possibly be all sent to Beijing for a year. He paused a little, drank some tea, and announced, “For set up the best orchestra of the province we need a talented violinist, such as you, to be the concertmaster.” He stressed the two words “talented” and “concertmaster”, or were the two words sounded specially stressed to me, anyway I went in with discontentment and out with satisfaction. That resulted my trip, the first and last time to Guilin, to be an album of black and white photographs of sight seeing.
New orchestra, new environment, new colleagues, everything was fresh and exciting. I felt happy and enjoyed myself everyday and totally forgot Shasha’s expectation of me to be out of Changsha and pursue my studies in Shanghai.
A couple of months later the orchestra was to give its debut concert, on the radio and TV, of course. We were all so excited and could not manage to sleep. It was at the midnight something odd happened.
I was called out of our military soldier guarded building, and I was Meimei with a little round figured woman. Before I recalling my memory to think who that woman could be she shouted at me with anxiety, “Something is bad, your brother Danjin is missing.”
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