A Visit From a Friend From The Other Side of The World

I was away for quite a while. I went for a 5 day business course.

Recently one of my customer/friend from Canada came to Singapore to visit.

This is Skully, one of the main charactors in my Who? Handroll blog post.


Because he did not buy enough Erhus from me, I decided to teach him a lesson and brought him to a fish farm to feed his feet to the fishes.

Naively, put his feet into the pool full of vociferous fishes, thinking that they will eat away the dead skin on his feet.


Pretty soon, he had no more hair left on his feet....


The progress was too slow, so I suggested to him to go to another pool with bigger fishes.


Soon he had only one foot left.....


This fish took a toe home for supper.


That will teach him to buy more Erhus from me!


Fearing for the rest of his limbs, he begged me to take him to my shop to buy one dozen Erhus back home.


As a special bonus for buying a dozen Erhus from me, I treated him to a Liang Xiao performance on the Erhu with the all seeing eye...


The moral of the story is, if you are coming to visit, buy enough Erhus from me first!

Beijing Music Fair 2008

Ok so here we go, an update on my trip to Beijing for their yearly music fair. It wasn't a particularly big scale fair, but all the better since I don't need to cover so much ground. I didn't take a lot of pictures so here they are.

Here is the entrance to the fairgrounds. The balding guy in the centre of the picture with a sling bag across is my father.


Here is where you insert your tickets. When you exit, you get touts waiting to buy your tickets to resell to others. But you have the police walking around trying to catch the touts as well.


In preparation of the upcoming Olympics, all visitors have to have their belongings scanned. They only confiscated cigarette lighters. I don't see anyone being searched like in the airport.


Here's where you line up to get your pass into the exhibition area. Foreign visitors have an express queue. :)


Another shot before going into the exhibition area.


There are booths set up opposite the ticketing area, mostly electronic products.


Traditional Chinese Music Instruments occupy a small hall on level 2. This is the first booth you see when you enter the hall.


Next to it is the booth of Biquan Guzhengs. They have a Guzheng performance going on!


Real triplets playing the Guzheng. Very charming. They are personally coached by my good friend and famous Guzheng performer Yuan Sha. They are 16 years old this year - all of them.


They were bamboo thin the first time I saw them 3 years ago. I heard they've been told to watch their weight!


Here's a short video of them in action:




This is the booth of Beijing Raoyang instruments factory. The boss is a certain Mr Yang. I had dinner him together with Dizi maker Dong Xue Hua and Pipa maker Cao Wei Dong one night. Boy can they drink. After downing a few bottles of Chinese liquor with 55% alcohol content, they still have to order a few bottles of beer to wash down the Chinese liquor!


Some Pipas hanging at the back of Beijing Raoyang's booth with artwork on it:




Newly designed arty Hulusis!


Ooh...Looks like some part of the female anatomy with dragons tattooed on it.


Erhu with huge scales on the snake skin.


Get an idea of the noise level I had to deal with at the fair:




Dear dear binoculars, what are you doing together with banhu resonators? Have you lost your way? The fair for peeping toms is on the other side....



Another electric Erhu found. I'll leave the details for another post.


Finally, a young dude in Zhang Zhong's booth playing Jiang He Shui. He's pretty good.




I'll post more after I've finished testing my newly acquired accessories.

I am back!

Took an overnight flight and touched down at 6am in the morning.

Well, overall I had a good trip to Beijing. The fair wasn't particular big (I reckon just 1/5 the size of the Shanghai trip) but I still saw some interesting stuff.

I've got some new Erhu bridges. Pictures and audio comparisms will be posted soon. I've also got lo and behold! - 2 pieces of the US$50 Erhu bridge to try out. It is made from fossilized wood that is 4300 years old! Tested it today and whoa....the difference will blow you away. Details coming soon.

I've also got some samples of a Pipa sling, so that you can dance and play the Pipa at the same time.

Brought back some Dong Xue Hua Xiaos and Dizis. If I owe you some DXH Dizis or Xiaos, they are already on their way.

I've got some pretty interesting Erhu bow as well, some woolly damper for the Erhu and an excellent sandalwood Erhu.

I'll post more details after I've tested them.

Videos of a Yangqin, Zhongruan, an Erhu

I would like to share 3 videos that I took recently of some music instruments.

1) The first is an instrument called the Yangqin. It is a dulcimer type instrument played using 2 beaters. Click here for a brief introduction of the Yangqin. The Yangqin in the 2 videos below is from Beijing Yuehua model number 402G.





It has such a beautiful tone. But maintaining and tuning it is such a pain. There are 100 over strings altogether. Imagine how tedious it is to restring the instrument. Its like restringing 20 over guitars in one shot.

But my collegue the baldie (you've seen him in some videos) does a fantastic job in restringing the Yangqin. He even soaks the small metal ball bearings in spirits to give it a shine.

2) A while ago one of my customers asked if I have a cheaper Zhongruan than those listed on my website. Well, we have one that costs US$219 and I made a sample video of it. Here it is:



Not listed on the website yet.

3) The last is a Sandalwood Erhu by Lu Lin Sheng. It was on my website for a long time but only recently I took a video of it.



---------------------------------------
Update on the new Erhu hardcases

Red color is out of stock! But we found one unit of blue.


The cases are listed here.

USA Economic Stimulus Package

President George Bush has announced, as part of the economic stimulus package, to give each US taxpayer as much as US$800 by Spring.

Now you should know by now I am on personal speaking terms with George Bush, who gave me the go ahead to adapt his Bush - Hu joke for my Hu Han Rou blog entry a couple of months ago.

I just got off the phone with him and wants US residents to spend all of it on Erhus, Pipas and Dizis in my online store!

I will in turn use the proceeds to buy books from Amazon.com, a ring for my wife from Tiffany & Co., a Chevrolet Corvette and a piece of US real estate from Ebay.

The ultimate goal of stimulating the US economy is achieved. In fact I've already done my part by paying to go to a seminar full of motivational speakers from all over USA!

But the last time I checked, only 27% of US citizens have positive views of George Bush. So the rest of the 73% might try to go against him. Rats!

-------------------------------------------------------------

I'm just kidding if you haven't figured it out by now.

By the way, we're having a Lu Lin Sheng Erhu promotion for our mailing list subscribers which is ending pretty soon. If you are interested to know more, please join our mailing list by filling up the form on the top right hand corner of this page.

Nothing In Particular...

Ok, I've finished posting his products on my online store. Head over to the new products page to take a look at them (the first five products).

If you are thinking of buying different strings to try out on your Erhu, take note that the strings need some time to run in. Give it at least a week before you conclude that your old strings are better.

----------------------

I just realized that the audio from the videos taken by my Canon digital camera is very bad. I recorded something using my Canon digital camera and a Fujifilm digital camera and the sound quality of Fujifilm turned out much better. The clip taken by Canon actually sounds very harsh, noisy and slightly sharp! Drat. All my product videos were taken by the Canon.

So when you view the product clips please imagine them sounding 50% nicer.

---------------------

By the way, I am going to a music fair in Beijing end of May. Let me know if you are looking for anything special.

Video Clips of Ruans

A while ago I had a post about the different types of Chinese Ruans.

The other day a Ruan player was at our shop so I asked him to play something on the Gao Yin Ruan (High pitched Ruan), Xiao Ruan (Small Ruan) and the most commonly used Zhong Ruan (Mid Ruan).

So here they are:

Suzhou Rosewood Gao Yin Ruan -






Shanghai Rosewood Xiao Ruan -






Beijing Rosewood Zhong Ruan -





Wonderful Instruments aren't they? And they are relatively easy to pick up compared to the Erhu, Guzheng or Pipa. Its a fretted instrument played using a pick, so guitar players should have no problems.

The Xiao Ruans and Gao Yin Ruans are not listed on my online store yet so please email me at tansungwah@gmail.com or tansungwah@eason.com.sg if you are interested in one.

Ruan Baby Ruan!

For the longest time, I've wanted to list the different types of ruans on my website. Mainly because the ruans are the Chinese equivalent of the western guitar(at least to me) and I thought people in the western countries might be interested.

I was still thinking about it before I went to take a nap. I then dreamt of a Filipino dancer who was in the same Music and Drama company as I was some 17 years ago. She told me her daughter had a starter grade Xiao Ruan and wanted to buy a better Xiao Ruan. So I sold her one that costs $650.

I conclude it is my subconsciousness telling me that there are loads of Filipino dancers out there with daughters wanting to upgrade there Xiao Ruans. I guess I better get my act together. (Disclaimer: I do not have any attraction to Filipino dancers.)

Currently I've only listed the Zhongruans, but there are 4 types of ruans, including the Zhongruan. In order of ascending pitch, 1) Da Ruan 2) Zhong Ruan 3) Xiao Ruan 4) Gao Yin Ruan. Here's a picture of them lined up together:


The ruans have a richer tone compared to the guitar, and it has only 4 strings. I've tried to play some blues and funk on the Zhongruan and it sounds alright actually. Not entirely trying to fit a square into a circle.

Will record some video/ sound clips soon.

Click here for our listings of Zhong Ruan.

Click here for additional information about the Ruan.

New Stocks - Part 1

Our new shipment of stocks just came in here are some of the more interesting items.

1) Man Rui Xing octagonal Erhus

The Man Rui Xing 8 sided Ebony Erhus look gorgeous and sound marvelous. I don't know if its just me but I find his workmanship really classy. The Erhu is feels responsive and sounds comfortably clean. The inner and outer strings and the highs and lows have very good balance. If you are looking for an octagonal Erhu, this is it:


Priced at US$420.

-------------------------------------

I've scoured the darkest pits and deepest oceans of China for a long time for these, because the 'authentic' ones are so darn expensive. Yes, I've finally found good quality China made Shakuhachis. There aren't many who makes these but this guy makes it well.

Before there were 8. Then there were 7:





Priced at US$200 each. Shipping to USA, Europe and Australia is US$12.

Happy Chinese New Year!

6th Feb is the start of the Chinese New Year and our office will be closed till 13 Feb.

Our apologies if there is a delay in shipping out your purchases during this period.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Big and Small Sanxian

Thought you might be interested in a bit more information about Sanxians. So I took some pictures, videos and measurements of the big and small Sanxian. (They come in big, medium and small. Click here to read more about the Sanxian.)

Here are 2 shots of the big Sanxian and small Sanxian lying together:




The big Sanxian measures: 123cm x 22cm(diameter of resonator) and the small Sanxian measures 100cm x 15cm.

You can imagine the medium Sanxian to be, well, somewhere in between.

Here are pictures and a sample clip of the big Beijing Rosewood Sanxian:

And here's the small Shanghai Rosewood Sanxian again:

Pardon the less than perfect playing. I had to put a gun to his head to make him play.

Space Management of Chinese Orchestra Room

Besides selling music instruments, helping schools to set up Chinese Orchestra, repairs and restoration of instruments, arranging music performances, arranging music classes, we also help schools look at how to better manage their space in their Chinese Orchestra room.

Below is a Chinese Orchestra Room of a school located in the north of Singapore. The instruments are strewn all over the floor because there is no proper storage system. It looks rather messy and instruments get damaged when they are accidentally kicked.





So we came in to take stock of their environment and instruments, and gave them suggestions on the layout, fixtures needed and exactly where the instruments should be placed.

This is how the Chinese Orchestra room looks after our suggestions were implemented.



Now you can do a gymnastics floor routine.

Where is My Pipa!!!!?????

I have been selling instruments online to customers all over the world for quite sometime now, since May 2006.

Most of the transactions have been smooth and hassle free.

Of course they were some issues here and there, like forgetting to insert dimo or erjiao together with the Dizi, items arrived damaged etc. But all these were resolved quickly and easily.

There was once instance where I mistakenly sent 2 Erhus to a customer instead of 1. The customer had different addresses for his paypal account and his ebay account. Hence I sent Erhus to his 2 different addresses. And because of that, I was late in sending an Erhu to another customer who decided to cancel his order and I had to refund him his money. Efforts to contact the customer who received 2 Erhus from me was met with silence. I suppose the temptation of owning 2 Erhus for the price of 1 was too great to resist.

More recently we made a big boo boo. We mixed up 2 mailing labels. One customer ordered a Shanghai Dunhuang Spruce Wood Pipa with Rosewood Pegs and the other a bullet shaped Erhu case. I sent the Pipa to the Erhu customer and the Erhu case to the Pipa customer!

So came an email from my Erhu customer about the Pipa:
"I have already a hard time learning erhu, Sung Wah....hehe...so what
do you want us to do about this thing?"

Then came the email from the Pipa customer about the Erhu case:
"HI! ,... My pipa arrived and all there was ,... was a case,.. NO INSTRUMENT ,.. no strings no tone generator no nails no dvd ... nothing .. all i got was a case ! ,.... can you please tell me why that IS! and send me instrument and all other items ,... i paid for ! Adult size PIPA!"

Ooops......

I can imagine the horror on my Pipa customer's face when he got the empty Erhu case. My Erhu customer was going to use the Pipa as a frying pan before I stopped him in time.

But all is good now. I have got them to send the items to each other and I will reimburse the shipping fees.

In kind, in the form of canned snails, for my Erhu customer though.

Erhu Belt Clip and Small Sanxian

In one of my previous posts, I talked about Erhu belt clips for playing the instrument standing up.

Well, I ordered a box that came with my latest shipment of instruments.

Here's how it works:



Frankly, I think the workmanship still has a lot of room for improvement, but it does the job. You might need to twist and turn, press and knead to make it fit nicely. In view of that, I am going to sell it at a low introductory price of US$8. It's not up on online store yet, but here's the link if you need one urgently: Erhu Belt Clip.

Another item I am going to list is the Shanghai Dunhuang small Sanxian.

Its not exactly a new product because I have it in my stocks for quite a while already. I just haven't listed it. We also have medium and large Sanxians as well. Do email me at tansungwah@eason.com.sg if you are looking for one.

Here's how the small Sanxian looks like:

Live and Let Live

After I posted my Hulusi I realized I have sold much of my Hulusis and left with only 1-2 pieces. New stocks will be arriving middle of January.

-----------------

My website seems to have frequent downtimes. I've feedback to my webhosting company a couple of times already and they have not been able to completely rectify the problem. The last suggestion they gave was to 'program the system to monitor my Tomcat and restart it automatically if it goes down'. Whatever that means. As long as it works.

But if anyone sees that my website is down, please drop me an email to inform me immediately. Thanks!

-----------------

We had an interesting encounter the other day with a customer. He came to our shop to look for an Erhu because he is starting his beginner class with a teacher. So after looking through a dozen Erhu models, he picked a starter model and paid for it.

A few days later he called again and says he want to return the Erhu and get a refund. Why? Is the Erhu defective? Is it not up to his expectations? Because if it is, he can come back and we can do an exchange or he can choose other models which suits him.

But the reason he wanted to return the Erhu is because his teacher had 'picked' an Erhu for him and wanted him to buy the Erhu.

The customer went further to say that he will complain to the Consumer Association of Singapore(CASE) if we do not let him return the Erhu. I am quite well versed in Singapore's Fair Trading Act and I don't see how this transaction contravenes any of the Fair Trading Acts.

But being nice and peace loving business people, and we cannot bear to see him making a fool out of himself at CASE, we told him to come back to our shop and we refunded his money.

Well, we have no problems with teachers selling instruments to their students to earn some side income. But if the teacher goes as far as condemning my instruments in order to sell his, even after the deal is done, then I would have issues with that.

There is a conception that teachers pick better instruments because they know how to play the instrument. True to a certain extent, but I've seen some teacher's picks that left me totally confounded. I don't know about other instrument shops, but my collegues and I are well versed in different kinds of Chinese instruments. On top of that, hundreds of instruments pass through our hands so I would presume we have enough exposure to different models of instruments.

When we see lemons brought in by customers for repairs, we would rather not comment, than comment negatively.

We prefer to co-exist peacefully.

Live and let live.

John Goldie, Chin Yen Choong and EIC

John Goldie is a famous jazz guitarist from UK and he is coming to Singapore on the 23 November for a one night only performance.

And he'll be pairing with our talented homegrown musician Chin Yen Choong on the Erhu!

This is the type of music John Goldie does:



And this is the type of music that Yen Choong plays: Liang Xiao

Wouldn't it be interesting to see them playing something together?

Joining in the night's performance are Jack and Rai from the famous Singapore band EIC. They'll be collaborating 1 or 2 numbers with Yen Choong as well.

For more details, please visit: http://www.citymusic.com.sg/latest.html

Pre-show tickets are priced at S$26 and are available at:
Eason Enterprises
City Music
The Arts House

(At the door ticket prices are S$35)

An Instrumental Guide to the Chinese Orchestra

There are not a lot of books on Chinese Orchestra Instruments in English. So I thought this book deserves another mention.


The title of the book is 'Qi' - An Instrumental Guide to the Chinese Orchestra. It gives a good overview of almost all the music instruments that is used in a Chinese Orchestra.

You should buy this book if:
- You are a student and ethnomusicology is one of your subjects
- You are a teacher in an educational institution with an ethnomusicology department
- You like to listen to traditional Chinese music. I'm sure you would want to know a little bit more about the instruments that produces those beautiful melodies.
- You plan to take up a Chinese music instrument and cannot decide which instrument.
- Your kids are in the Chinese Orchestra of their school. Read this book and wow them with your superior knowledge in Chinese Orchestra Instruments.

The author Samuel Wong Shengmiao, is one good Singaporean Pipa player. His previous books include 'Impressions of a Pipa player' and “An Impression of the Pipa: A Recording in 24 hours”. He is currently studying his PhD in University of Sheffield. Click here to read more about him.

Click here for the contents page of the book.

And here for an except of the book.

If you would like to purchase the book, click here!

For bulk purchases, please email Natalie at natalie.teng@gmail.com.

Zi Zu Diao

I've been very busy these few days and have no time to update the blog.

So I'll leave you with a video clip of yet another Mooncake festival performance by four talented young musicians that took place yesterday at OUB centre.

Incidentally, the pipa and erhu player are holding their own solo recitals sometime next month.



Here's them doing "Zi Zu Diao":

Food, Glorious Food

I realized that there are quite a lot of Singaporeans reading my blog. Singaporeans love good food, especially when they are cheap, so I thought here's my chance to be a Rochor Centre(where my shop is located) food critic, in case anyone decides to drop by for some supplies.

But first, some directions on how to get to my shop. A lot of people who came to my shop for the first time complained that they took quite a while to find out where we are. Click here for a map of our location. Rochor Centre is a poorly designed big complex with little navigation signs. Just look out for the Church of Lady Lourdes and we are located right opposite the church.

Below our shop is a coffeeshop named Coffeetown. (For non-Singaporean readers, a coffeeshop is a place where you have different food operators selling different kinds of cuisine) In that small little coffeeshop are 4 stalls worth mentioning. The first is a stall that sells very good roast duck, roast pork and charsiew rice. The rice is served with a bowl of soup that is very tasty. The soup usually runs out by afternoon. That is the most popular stall in the coffeeshop. Ask for some of their dark soya sauce to go with the rice. Its sweet and fragrant and they don't give to their customers unless they ask.

The second stall is one selling homemade Bao and Dim Sum. The Baos are freshly made in their stall everyday. They have interesting creations like coffee Bao and '3 in 1' Bao that is filled with Tau Sar, Lian Rong and salted duck yolk! Its a little too sweet for my taste though, but the Big Bao is fabulous. (Baos are steamed buns with different kind of fillings) The stall was featured in the newspapers and had very long queues for subsequent weeks. The euphoria has since died down and you can buy the Baos without queuing now.

The third stall is the Malay stall. Their fried chicken rice is very popular. The chicken is crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. The chilli paste that comes with it is very hot and spicy and goes very well with the rice!

The last stall is the mixed vegetable stall. Their dishes are actually quite tasty with a home cook feel. You get the feeling that their raw meat and vegetables are cleaned thoroughly before cooking.

Just around the corner is another coffeeshop named Kopitiam. Here you can find the famous Song Fa Bah Kut Teh that used to be opposite Bugis MRT station. Another stall worth mentioning is the braised duck rice stall. The soup that comes with it is savoury and full of chinese herbs. Check out their mutton soup as well.

Bon Appetit!

The Clip on Chromatic Digital Tuner

This is a handy little digital tuner I thought you all might be interested in.

The tuner is fixed onto a clip. The display is can be flipped up and down and rotatable 360 degrees. Thus you can adjust the angle of the display so that it can be read easily when you clip on to your instrument.

Tuner on Erhu

Tuner on Liuqin

You also have an option of tuning using the built in microphone. Tunes chromatically so theoretically you can use it to tune any instrument.

Interested parties can purchase it here.