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, aged eight 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 world's most prodigious manufacturers of inexpensive cellos, violas, violins and double basses. Last year the town's nine factories and 150 small workshops produced 250,000 instruments, most of them ending up in the United States, Britain and Germany.
The city fathers have taken to boasting that Donggaocun produces 30 per cent of the world's string instruments, although another town in south-east China, Xiqiao, makes a similar, if slightly more credible, claim.
Feng Yuankai of the China Musical Instrument Association said that Xiqiao is still the top producer, but Donggaocun is catching up. "Even with the economic slowdown their output is growing very quickly," he said, adding that Donggaocun has less than 20 per cent of China's violin market.
A disputed ranking or the recent slump in orders is not about to dent Donggaocun's ambitions. Last month, officials began promoting the creation of a tourist attraction. 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. Even if about half the players – those too green for public consumption – were asked to refrain from actual 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 have become not only a driver of economic development, but they 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," she said.
The workers at Beijing Hongsheng Yun Violin Instruments Co. largely agree with that assessment. 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 Olympics last August, the authorities closed the plant and invested government money in violin production.
Although 200 workers lost their jobs when the paper plant closed, the two dozen people who were re-hired 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."
Few students match the eagerness of Song Wei, 47, a retired nursery teacher who gave up the accordion for the violin after her husband and uncle began making string instruments.
She practises for 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."
The full article contains 653 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
