Master Lai Sau-hin
Master Lai Sau-hin is the last remaining erhu maker in Hong Kong. He talks to June Ng about his love for the Chinese violin, art and the West Kowloon cultural district.
HK Magazine: When did you first learn the erhu?
Lai Sau-hin: I was born in a rural village on Hainan Island and grew up there in the 1950s. These days it’s a tourist destination, but back then there wasn’t anything for a young person to do, except when the touring Chinese opera troupe came to our village from time to time. I thought the erhu player was so cool.
HK: So from there, how did you learn to make them?
LS: After I saw the erhu musician, I asked the older boys in the village to show me how to play. Soon, I even got better than my teacher! I applied to study art at university, but I couldn’t get in because I’m too short—at the time, men had to be taller than 165cm to enroll. It didn’t matter because the Cultural Revolution had begun by that time, and I became an erhu player in a propaganda orchestra. I really wanted my own instrument, but a good one those days cost $5, and I only earned a few dozen dollars a month. So I decided to make my own with an instruction booklet that someone had brought from the city.
HK: So you didn’t have anyone teach you?
LS: You could say I learned from a carpenter. I took him the draft and asked him how to turn the wood into the shapes I needed. People in villages are always very nice and willing to share their knowledge. I remember sculpting the wood for the erhu body—it took me two months and I had to use a very primitive tool. But learning like that, you have to be really focused.
HK: When you came to Hong Kong, you stopped playing the instrument for 20 years. Why did you stop? And why did you decide to start playing again?
LS: When I first came here, I couldn’t be a musician anymore because the music scene is very tightly knit and I didn’t have the right contacts, so I worked in a factory instead. Time flew by, and suddenly I was retired, my partner had passed away two years ago and I had absolutely nothing to do. Then I wondered, why don’t I go back to my passion of making erhu and teaching people how to play? So I spent a year planning and setting up my school.
HK: You’ve had your studio in the Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre for over a year now. Do you like it?
LS: It could be better—it’s not very diverse. Ninety percent of the studios are dedicated to painters. Shouldn’t it embrace other art forms too? We don’t even have one dance studio!
HK: What do you think of Hong Kong’s art education?
LS: For a metropolitan city, our arts education is a total failure. I have so many students who have graduated from university that don’t even know how to sing do-re-mi properly. What did they learn at school?
