Piano skills are the keys to success

In one sense, the destination for 9-year-old Pu Huobin, from a town in Ruili city, Southwest China's Yunnan province, on the Myanmar border, was Shanghai.

It was the first major trip for Huobin, who was traveling with his mother to the eastern metropolis in early August.

It involved a 90-minute car ride to the airport in Mangshi city, Dehong Dai and Jingpo autonomous prefecture, for a flight to Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan.

A flight to Shanghai rounded off the daylong adventure.

But this was not any ordinary trip. Shanghai was the destination for destiny. The boy, a member of the Jingpo ethnic group, took the long journey to attend a national piano competition.

Piano players from 34 provincial-level regions of the country gathered in Shanghai for the national finals of the 17th Shanghai International Youth Piano Competition from Saturday to Tuesday. Huobin was one of the 800 amateur and professional piano players who took part in this year's final contest.

He started learning to play the piano, or the electric organ to be more precise, at 5. His parents had planned to let him embark on the path of learning the piano, but the instrument was not available in the rural area, where his family lived, back then.

"Now we live in a town, and take my son to the downtown area of Mangshi city to attend piano lessons once a week. Children learning to play the piano are emerging in our hometown," says Chang Lanxiu, the boy's proud mother.

"Pianos and piano teachers are no longer a rarity in small cities of Yunnan, although the number is still small compared with big cities," she says.

Chu Wanghua, an acclaimed composer and pianist, says that good piano players were mainly from big cities, like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, Guangdong province, around three decades ago, when learning to play the piano became popular.

But accomplished piano players from remote and less economically developed areas have been more frequently seen over the past five years, he says.

"Like all forms of art, the piano, the king of all musical instruments, has penetrated to the remote regions of the country with social and economic advancements," says Chu, who is also chairman of the judging committee of this year's national finals.

"I believe that this trend will continue as learning music is an indispensable part of the nation's cultural construction," he says.

Chang, a math teacher in a local primary school, says although the cost for her son's piano lessons takes a bite out of the couple's income, they will persist in sending the boy to continue learning as long as he enjoys it.

"Singing and dancing are in the genes of people belonging to the Jingpo ethnic group. Whenever my son plays the piano, and my husband and I join the melody by singing, it's an absolute joy for our family," she says.

Huobin says he aspires to be a piano teacher when he grows up, which will allow him to help more people better enjoy the beauty of music.

With 27 million individuals learning to play the piano, China is a major global market, and experts say, is making its presence felt, says Chu.

With graduates from the country's major conservatories of music and renowned music schools overseas joining in piano training all over the country, young students now have access to better teaching resources than ever before, he says.

"China's overall standard in piano playing has been on par with developed countries. We've been seeing Chinese contestants deliver excellent performance in influential international competitions," says Chu.

Huang Chan, a native of Changsha city, Central China's Hunan province, who obtained her master's degrees in both piano playing and music education at the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar in Germany, gave up job opportunities in the country's most vibrant cities and chose to return to her hometown to work in 2008.

Quite a few of her students have been admitted to elite conservatories of music at home and abroad, and some secured good rankings in national competitions.

"The desire to learn piano doesn't only exist in first-tier cities. I wanted to dedicate myself to helping people in my hometown with an aim to improve the art," says Huang, who is also a member of the jury of the national finals of the 17th Shanghai International Youth Piano Competition.

The escalating strength in piano skills in the country can also be reflected by the fact that music pieces, especially those composed with Chinese aesthetics, have sprung up in recent years, and are gaining international popularity, industry insiders say.

"Composers have applied various modern techniques to produce piano pieces with strong Chinese flavor. Chinese piano pieces are improving significantly in both quantity and quality in the past few years," says Zhou Qin, deputy director of the piano department at the Capital Normal University in Beijing.