The Taiwanese Music Master

During the very short time in which I have been living in Taiwan, I have had a number of opportunities to experience traditional Chinese music and Taiwanese generosity.

On our very first evening in Yilan, we left one apartment in our complex to visit another and stumbled upon a recital at the music school in the first level of my building. We were invited to join the audience, given water cups and bags of fruit and treated to a great concert on traditional instruments like the erhu and pipa. (This was also our first experience as quasi-celebrities; Taiwanese people will often stare at us in the streets or take our pictures and the concert was no exception!) After more than an hour of incredible music, though, they called upon a man in the crowd with the most English to try to entice us to perform a song for them. Unabashed, we gave a pretty terrible rendition of "A Whole New World," which, despite it's resemblance to a bad karaoke song, was still received. Ann also was called upon to play the piano, which she did beautifully!

We stumbled onto our next musical discovery the next morning while on an exploratory expedition through Yilan. As we arrived at an intersection that looked markedly different than the rest, we came upon the Music House, an old building with incredible architecture that has been preserved by the government and now serves as a cultural space. The air conditioning certainly offered a great respite from the tortuous humidity, but the environment of the Music House itself was also an incredible find. After giving us a lengthy tour in Mandarin that Mandi translated for group, she invited us back later that day for a free concert.

After exploring some more, we returned to hear an incredible half hour of yangqin (Chinese dulcimer) music performed by the resident laoshi (teacher). He mixed tradition with folksong and performance with instruction. And though I couldn't understand most of the Mandarin, his gestures were so clear and his music so inviting that the language gap didn't even matter. Once he finished his performance, we were invited to try out the instruments. What he had made to seem so effortless actually involves precisely hitting the correct string out of several hundred with a teeny, tiny mallot. Even more impressive!


We went back to hear his concert again today and Laoshi generously gave us eight tickets to his concert in Taipei on August 20. When we offered to pay him for the tickets -- it would be worth it to buy tickets for this concert! -- the Music House matron translated that we came so far he would be honored for us to be there. That is the kind of generosity that is just so incredible here! (Related: Last night it was lightly raining as we walked to dinner. A woman stopped her car to give us an umbrella for our walk.)

So if there is one part of Taiwanese culture (other than food) in which I feel well immersed already, it is music. There is just something soothing about sitting in the cool, bright rooms of the Music House and listening to a yangqin. As we sat today, Mary, Adam and I decided there could be no war if international peace talks were held in that atmosphere!