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SCMP Reporter

Sixty-year-old Chai Shoushan  is very happy  with his job,  making and repairing musical instruments for Peking Opera.  He has finally made opera an indispensable part of his life.
Each day, elderly  men and women wander into his small musical- instrument store in a quiet corner of Gu Wenhua Jie, or the Avenue of Ancient Culture, in downtown Tianjin  and say hello.
They discuss the tonality of some instruments, or simply hum an opera melody together as one of them plays the jinghu, or Peking Opera  fiddle.
'Most of my frequent customers are elderly - about my age - and we share the same love for Peking  Opera,' Mr Chai said.
Born in Tianjin, Mr Chai was a skilled lathe operator before retiring in 2000 from a small state-owned firm in Hebei  and opening his musical instrument shop. The walls  are lined with various incarnations of drums and bamboo flutes, and  Mr Chai spends most of the day sitting behind a desk, cutting, drilling and filing bamboo cylinders, and gluing snakeskin to make the jinghu.
Unlike most store owners who leap up eagerly to greet  customers,  Mr Chai  remains busy at his desk unless the customer comes over and asks him something.
'People entering my store usually know a little bit about music or Peking Opera and they know what they are looking for.  If they want to buy something, they will. Pestering or false enthusiasm doesn't do the job.'
Occasionally,  overseas tourists also come and buy his handmade jinghu. Mr Chai usually suggests cheaper ones, priced around 150 yuan  (HK$172), although some high-quality jinghu carry price tags of more than 2,000 yuan.
'In the eyes of most foreigners, the jinghu is just an adornment in their rooms, therefore it's a pity, and also unfair, for the jinghu if I sell it to those who don't really understand it just so I can get a higher price,' he said. Mr Chai's  interest in Peking Opera developed during  the Cultural Revolution, when he and his middle schoolmates were sent out to the countryside in Qingzhou , Hebei,  to learn from farmers.
With day after day of dreary crop-planting, the only entertainment was to listen on the radio to Yangbanxi, the government-designated 'model plays' in the Peking Opera repertoire.
The plays' plots were  tedious eulogies to  revolutionary heroism, but the melodies were pleasant to Mr Chai's ears. Gradually, he learned to play the jinghu and began to earn some fame in  nearby villages.
Later on, Mr Chai was told to give up his work in the fields and join an itinerant troupe to entertain farmers.
One of his classmates in the village shared his passion for Peking Opera and frequently went with him on his trips to  sing.  That singer later became Mr Chai's wife.
'The 10 years during the Cultural Revolution were certainly full of hardships, bitterness and distortion of humanity. But the beautiful melodies of Peking Opera offered me a spiritual sanctuary to get through those otherwise unbearable days,' he said, putting  the final touches  to a new jinghu.
A father and his 14-year-old son then entered the shop  asking to buy a jinghu. The father said  neither he nor his wife  knew anything about Peking Opera, but the boy  loved it and insisted on having one.
'What's the price for the jinghu hung over there please, sir,' the father asked.
'The prices are anywhere from less than 200 yuan to more than 2,000 yuan apiece,' Mr Chai said.
The father and son picked up a  2,200 yuan instrument,  examining it for about 15 minutes, then  left.
'If the boy comes back again, I will sell the one he picked for 300 yuan,' Mr Chai said,  without lifting his head from his work.
Half an hour later, the father and son showed up at the doorway again.



Musical-instrument maker lives and breathes Peking Opera culture