Hello, welcome to Roundtable where we serve up piping hot debates on the issues that sizzle in China and beyond.
I'm Niu Honglin, and together with me, Lai Ming and Yishan.
Hello, everybody.
Hey, guys.
Instead of staying in our comfy studios having heated discussions, today we're in somewhere special.
We are in the southwest province of Guizhou, and this does not sound Guizhou, or look Guizhou.
It does not shout out Guizhou, but it's actually very Guizhou, and here's why yeah, right now we're in the guitar museum right there in the Zhong'an county, in the city of Zuni, in southwest China's Guizhou province and, as you can see in the background, there are all different kinds of guitar of all different colors, different sizes, made from different local companies.
And we're going to discover a bit more on the local guitar industry as we discuss.
I've never seen so many guitars in these two days.
Me too!
I mean, when I was in middle school, I learned guitar a little bit.
Oh yeah?
Like for around two months.
It was really fun, and I was able to sing along with the sound of guitars.
In just two months?
In just two months.
So that's how easy the instrument is.
By saying easy, I mean that you can play along as long as you learn it for several months.
Of course, if you want to be a master, if you want to have a guitar in this place, some guitar like this in this place.
It's harder than that.
But...
What I'm trying to say here is that I've had my fair share of looking at different guitars, but I have never seen so many guitars like this in these two days.
And, in many shapes and forms, not only the complete product but the different stages as they are being manufactured.
And also like in the shape or in the kind of sculpture.
In the shape that you can only see with an eagle eye from the, let's say, middle of the sky and looking down, you get to see a guitar-shaped Park.
Yeah, a square.
Square in the city center in the center of the Johan County.
I heard that's how they designed the guitar as a say, a label or a symbol of the local decoration where you can literally see the guitar shaped decoration everywhere on their benches, in the park, on their their road, like lamp.
Decorations, they're literally everywhere.
They're everywhere.
And I enjoy it.
I find it very musical to the eyes.
Sure.
It's the theme of the city.
I mean, for good reason, because here they produce one seventh.
Well, that's slightly fewer, but still quite significant.
So one-seventh of the guitars made in this country.
That's very impressive.
In fact, one-seventh of the guitar around the world is from here.
And one-fifth of the guitar in the country is from here in Jiangnan County.
So yes, they make a lot of guitars.
As for the exact location, we are in a cultural museum of guitars.
If you tour the place a little bit, you get to see the history of the making of guitars, what types of guitars or what type of musical instrument guitar used to be.
So the birth or the evolution of the musical instrument guitar.
And you also get to see how guitar is introduced to the county of Zheng'an, because we've talked a little bit about how come There are so many guitars here.
They manufacture so many guitars.
And they are the birthplace of one-seventh of the world's guitars.
Yet to the history of guitar making in Zheng'an County, take a guess how long?
A little more than 10 years.
A little than a decade.
It's not that long.
So there is also this brief history of how, come this place became the place of guitar for, especially the guitar insiders, the manufacturers, the industry.
There's history of that.
And if you continue to tour the place, you also get to see the most high-end guitars, the very...
The expensive ones, the very beautiful ones.
By saying beautiful, I mean both the appearance and the sound.
And here in this exhibition hall kind of place, you can also buy a guitar if you want.
So find the one you like, play a little bit, and if you enjoy it, you get to take one home.
Yeah, I see some empty slots, meaning somebody must have walked in and felt like they enjoyed playing with the guitar and they paid for it.
So they're yet to fill that vacancy with a new substitute.
Yes.
And in the beginning of the show, you've seen a little bit of us playing guitar.
Even I said that I know or I've learned guitar for two months.
Remember, that's only two months.
I don't really know how to play guitar.
That's why I mess with it a little bit.
Well, it's better than I have.
No, I just want to add on that the learning of guitar is not something as simple as saying it.
Because when you try to learn to press that very thick string onto the neck of the guitar, that's like very painful on the tip of your finger as well.
I tried it.
I used to play the violin for so long that I'm so used to very thin strings and only four strings to try to master.
But on a guitar, there are six strings, as many of you probably have already known.
And you have to really twist your wrist really hard in order to move swiftly.
In the meantime, you have to endure the fact that it's hurting the tip of your finger while you're trying to make sound out of it.
So two months is Pretty impressive.
And this is from someone who has truly tried to learn a string instrument, or someone who's tried to learn a guitar.
I was exposed to guitar when I was very little, so I don't believe I had the right size of hands to to work with the what do you call them?
The, the string and then the size of it.
So also it was not a regular toy that you can pick up and just play with it.
You have to sometimes adjust the strings so they sound right, So that was a bit frustrating for me.
So that really put me off.
Yes, but my feeling is that in my teenage times, or when I was in high school or college, those who can play a guitar, they are Charming.
Charming.
Especially the guys, I would assume.
They sit in the campus, play a little bit guitar, sing along, and they don't have to look at anybody.
They just, you know, be immersed in the music, enjoying their music, and everybody was looking at them.
So it was a quite interesting phenomenon, explaining how come guitar has been more and more popular among the younger generation, middle-aged people, as well as the relatively elder, yet very artsy older people, older generation as well.
So I get to see that guitar is gaining the momentum in the country.
But why Zheng An?
Or let's, before asking why, let's first explain the situation that we've observed, the facts and figures here in Zheng An County.
Well, Zheng An is not exactly very close to where actions are taking place.
It's just like the rest of Guizhou province is mountainous and we drove two hours from the city of Zunyi and to think that Zunyi is already two hours from the capital city, Guiyang.
So it's tucked away in the mountains and the population is around 660000, not a lot of people, and it's so mountainous that there aren't a lot of agriculture.
So the The arable land was not sufficient enough to sustain the population.
So for many years, if in fact for decades, the local government has been pushing for locals to go out and seek employment to support the families.
And that's no longer the case, because in the recent decade, in fact, that's what the real action took place.
In the recent decade, the Zheng'an government did a research and survey into what ways can they help the local population prosper and thrive.
The survey showed around 50000 people engaged in the guitar industry in Guangzhou or around the world.
Yes, that was actually very impressive because at the very beginning, the first batch of to be more precise, ladies was sent out to outside of Zheng An to find a job and they were sent to Guangzhou 300 ladies doing manual labor work in these places.
Because that was also a period of time where China was also developing the coastal areas.
Guangzhou was developing and many manufacturing industries settled in Guangzhou, meaning that they do need the laborers, and that's when they went there.
That happened in 1990s.
Yes, and these ladies along with people following suit engaged in different industries.
You don't know how destiny can sometimes be so magical with that population or with around, like Lai Ming said, 50000 people at around 2013 engaged in the guitar manufacturing industry.
People decided that this might be a good opportunity, a good resource or even an invisible endowment of the Zheng'an County.
It was a valuable asset.
So the land resources or the mineral resources maybe was on the shorter end.
But then the local officials thought human resources are just as valuable, if not even more so.
So they came up with the idea of inviting businesses who were already thriving outside of the place, for instance in Guangzhou, to try and attract them to established bass in their hometown.
So that happened in around the year 2013.
Yeah, around that time.
And speaking of the guitar industry here in the Zheng'an County, we have to mention one name, which is Zheng Chuanzhou.
So Mr Zheng, he is the one that the Zheng'an County first invited from Guangzhou back here to Zheng'an, because he originally is from Zheng'an.
And he went out to seek work back in the 1990s, I believe.
And he spent 10 years learning to make guitar, craft guitar.
He learned all the 200 different steps of making a guitar and becomes such a master of guitar crafting himself.
And around the time of 2013, he already established such an individual company named Xinchu Instrument Manufacturing Company in Guangzhou, where that's around the time when the Zhong'an County started to initiate a project which they call calling the phoenix back to their nest, which literally means calling on to the talents of that are originally from gentleman back to their hometown to try to, you know, innovate and try to and built the local uh industries.
And mister john, at around 2013, was among the first who came back, who also brought back the three different manufacturing processing line of guitar, along with 200 of his workers, who were also from Zheng An, with the three trucks or three buses back then all the way from Guangzhou back here to Zheng An, and they built like the first local guitar company in their hometown.
And he mentioned in an interview earlier that Zhong'an only had a more advanced public transportation system towards the outside at around 2015.
So during that year, when they returned in 2013 2014, it was really hard for them to ship all that raw materials and big, big manufacturing equipment back to Zhong'an, but they still managed to do it.
And with their efforts, the 200 workers from 2013 nowadays become over 400 and they're generating a lot, of say, annual revenues each year, exporting their guitars to over 40 countries nowadays.
That's a lot of accomplishment for one guy who kind of led on the industry locally.
That was a very powerful first step.
And what impressed me even more was that he realized he very, very quickly realized that only one great company or great manufacturer here in the county is not going to be enough.
For him, for his company mainly.
They do or they manufacture guitars for other brands.
They can definitely produce the kind of guitar that is up to the standard of these big brands is, including international brands.
Yet it's still enough.
If they want to continue to move, they need collective effort.
That is why he himself, as well as governments here, have tried to ask for invite more companies back or invite them to come here and set up their own manufacturing line and invite more different types of companies along the manufacturing or the industrial line.
So that was, I think, the real beginning of this place become an industrial park, become a place with the entire industrial link, with a full or complete industry.
That was also Kind of like a story that is unlikely for an entrepreneur because you want to be the biggest one.
And apparently, if you want to be the biggest one, you need to have some more to prove that you are the biggest one.
You need to have peers.
You need to have peers.
Right.
So now, this small county tucked away in the mountains is home to 144 enterprises involved in the trade of making guitar, and They employ the local people, and a lot more people benefit directly or indirectly in association with the guitar industry.
And they're talking about 11000 to 15000 people associated with the trade, and more than half of them are women who stay at home to take care of their kids and their family but, at the same time, engage in the industry as well.
That's 11,000 households, not only 11,000 people.
11,000 individuals from 11,000 families, let's say.
Exactly.
And we talk about the making of guitars.
Previously, on Monday, I had the chance to visit a guitar factory, one production line.
I cannot believe my eyes.
So to start with the process of guitars have so many different steps.
I can kind of imagine that you need to glue things together.
You need to install the string.
That's what I imagined.
But when I was actually in the factory and looking at different steps, I realized how precise, how exquisite these processes started to be.
So if you are only making, for instance, a handmade guitar as a leisure time fun for yourself at home, definitely you can buy some pieces, glue them together and appreciate your little guitar.
That might not sound really good.
But if you are manufacturing good, high-end guitars, you need to make sure every detail is perfect, is up to the standard, is acceptable for the consumers.
Not only do you need to design the brace very carefully, which is the foundation of the echoing in the sound case, you need to design it into different models.
You need to find the perfect ones.
You need to decide whether or not you want the voice to be gentle or to be bright.
You can achieve those goals by designing the brace carefully.
And when you glue them together see when I say glue them together it sounds like kindergarten kids playing with their toys.
But what actually happens in the factory is that they glue them very carefully and you cannot feel the attaching lines at all.
And you would also need a vacuum machine to put them precisely together, very together.
So by touching it, it feels like it's something carved out of a, I don't know, whole entire wood.
So that's how complete it feels.
And all the other details, the embed, the decoration on the guitar are very interesting.
I find it very cool.
Yeah, I think during the two days we've been here we've seen different guitars, especially the inside of different guitars.
There are acoustic guitars, classic guitars, and different types.
And especially when it comes to high-end and handmade guitars.
The potential buyer may have specific demand for how the guitar should sound, the timbre and whether they will perform well under different circumstances.
As such, we see the inside of the guitars, sometimes you see, did you use the word brace?
Yes.
So there's inner structure of the inside, and they sometimes are scattered like the wings of a butterfly.
Sometimes they are symmetric but different times they are asymmetric to work with the structure of the board because they're not always the same.
You need good techniques, but you also need good ears to be able to tell what you are making and what's coming out of the artifact that you are making.
Bear with me a little bit.
I know I might sound nerdy, but I want to give this information.
So they're using different types of materials to make the guitar.
They use Bruce.
They use cedar rosewood mahogany, different types of wood, spruce soundboard offers a bright tone and the white rosewood and the rosewood back and sides provide a warm sound.
So all these different materials actually also matter.
And you know the guitar.
Let me hold a guitar.
Do you mind giving me the guitar?
Thank you yes, This is an electric guitar.
I should not be using this as an example, but just bear with me.
So this is the sound board and this is the side board.
And here, this is also, I'm going to call it front board.
I'm pretty sure I'm wrong, but they need different functions.
So you want the sound board to give the sound, to give the echo as good as possible.
To bounce it back.
To bounce it back.
Yet for the front board.
You want the sound to be able to penetrate, to be not affected by the front board.
So different boards, different material, different technique can be quite important.
And we see when it comes to soundboard making, the soundboard is very crucial.
It can be a single board, which means the board is made from one wood piece, Offering better tone, or it can be laminated wood, more cost effective.
So different types of material, different techniques, whether or not the guitar is made by machine.
Oh, by the way, if you're talking about relatively middle end guitars, the entire process can be finished, can be accomplished by machines.
You don't really need manual labor.
But again, if you want to make the high-end guitars, manual labor is quite important.
So what i'm saying here is that the shape of the sound board, you need to find the right place to drill the sound hole and inlay with bench drills, and all these things can affect the sound of a guitar.
And I didn't used to know that.
I'm not sure if you guys have been to a concert hall before, but on the wall of a concert hall you can basically see see the similar, what you call it the brace.
You can see the similar patterns of a brace on the inside of the front board of a guitar.
There's different shapes carved onto the walls of a concert hall in order for the central sound to be better spread out throughout different layers of the audiences, and that's the same.
On the inside side of the front board there are different say, materials used, the wood slots being being stick together, and also every inch they carve out or carve out of the brace is going to change the echoing of the sound inside the guitar's body.
So all of which determines the sound and also the price of a guitar.
So and Honglin, you mentioned earlier that the single board, it means using one whole board, especially at the back of the guitar.
Yes, one whole wood, wood piece.
That's the same manufacturing technique in making violins as well.
And for violins that was one whole board.
That's usually like doubling the price of using laminated board to plays together as one.
So that also has a lot to decide on the quality of the guitar as well.
So they're just adding a little bit of scientific fun facts.
I find that quite nerdy yet fun.
So hope you're also the nerdy kind so you can appreciate our little guitar trivia right.
That being said, here in this county we see factories making different types of guitar.
We have the relatively cost-effective ones, meaning that you can get a guitar and play with it.
If you're only learning it for two months and want to show or brag or being a little bit showy in front of your classmates, you can buy the cheaper type of guitar, because your eye, your ears by saying you, i mean me myself would not be able to identify the difference between a 200 yuan type and a 2000 yuan type, probably.
But if you're looking for authentic guitars, that the kind of guitar that is manufactured with its own brand, developed with its own brand it can be found here as well.
Yeah, because we know that here in the region, 144 companies for sure.
A lot of them, they work for OEM.
They work, they produce guitars on behalf of other, perhaps international brands, and they get the tags printed on them and just sell them.
But others, they decide that they want to have their own unique brand.
They want to build on what they already have, the human resources.
They take know-how and to build up their own brand.
So they will have design and research and they will sometimes come up with handmade guitars that apply different materials high-end materials and they use different techniques.
A very typical example is in the paint that they use.
We walk into, in fact, the studio of a master whose studio is right opposite this cultural museum.
And when we walked into that studio, we felt nothing, nothing but fragrance.
And the master, whose name is Zhang Weiyi, said that this is because he's using organic paint.
Yes, organic shellac, Shellac.
So this is the excrement of a certain bug, and they process it and they soak the paint into.
I believe it's alcohol, so it's diluted, and then the worker would apply the diluted paint again and again, layer upon layer, on the body of the guitar.
It's therapeutic, to be honest.
It's fragrant.
You don't feel the industrial or chemical kind of smell as we felt when we stepped into other studios or other factories.
So there's one for each.
If you are the master kind of musician, you're looking for something unique, then you have options and you can find them here.
And also the master is working on introducing the local flavor into the guitars that he's making.
The Miao people are the prevalent population in this region and they have their own unique culture.
We've mentioned this on the show before.
They're using batik and silverware, silversmithing.
So a lot of the elements are being applied to the guitars that he's making as well.
I'm pretty sure you know this already, because we've explained a lot about how important it is to keep the sound of the guitar authentic and good, which means if you include any type of element onto the guitar as a decoration or as a way to show that this guitar is with character, you need to also do the science to make sure that the silver, which is much heavier than wood itself, And it vibrates differently.
Yes, would not affect the sound quality of the guitar.
And being able to do that, I find it quite smart and magnificent.
And besides that, he's also the first one who's using bamboo instead of wood to craft a guitar.
And the bamboo guitar now sells around three thousands every year.
So people, it's a niche market still, but people love the bamboo guitar.
Yeah, you can play with the guitar and while you're playing with it for longer three years, five years it'll also change the color of the guitar a little bit.
So give it a little bit for your own color.
Yesterday, when i felt that bamboo made guitar, the first impression I had is that it's I think it's relatively lighter, not only on the color but also on the whole general feeling when you touch it, because it's all made of bamboo, the sound tend to, you know, get out of the body of the guitar easier in a, in a lighter way, with a higher volume of sound, even with a very slight flip on this on the strings.
And also the manager of the factory that we visited once mentioned that the reason why they wanted to make the bamboo guitar or guitars made of carbon fiber or all the other materials other than wood is that wood they are planted, they become tree and then we make them into raw materials and then craft them into guitar.
But what if say, one day, I cannot import no more the rosewood from India?
What if there's this wood that we use every day that's going to be gone for good?
What if there's no replacement by the time that we want to figure out one?
So they're already thinking about how to make say greener, say recyclable materials and how to craft that into guitar making materials.
So that's why we see there's bamboo guitar, there's carbon fiber guitar and there's also another type of local plant that's been used into guitar that I cannot name.
This fascinates me because of the detail and the chasing of the extreme level of beautiful in human gene.
We're doing this to start with because we have an industrial line that is complete enough that support us to do the research, to try to find the little nugget that we want.
Try to find different types of materials, because it's easy to say ah, we're making a guitar out of bamboo, but you need to glue the bamboo together seamlessly.
You need to find the right glue, you need to find the right technique, you need to find an entire maybe the bamboo one is not made entirely by hands.
Right now you can find the machine as well to do that, and The system supports people to do that.
And also people have the drive to do that.
I have to be honest with you.
I've tried to distinguish different sounds from different levels of guitars.
I can hear the difference between a 201 and a 2001.
I'm talking about Yuan.
I've also tried to distinguish the different sounds quality between a 2000 yuan guitar and a 20000 yuan guitar.
And when I try to distinguish a 20000 yuan guitar compared to a 200000 yuan guitar, I cannot hear the difference anymore.
Well, we can't find our job here.
We can't.
This is a job for the professional.
Right.
And there's a little more caveat about the bamboo guitar is that there's a lot of research and experiment that have gone into making bamboo as a legible candidate for making guitars.
The material has to go through a carbonization process for multiple times and they have to try and remove the sugar content from the bamboo.
So this means a lot of efforts, a lot of thinking, a lot of experiment fail and to trial and again that kind of experiments.
But it goes to show how dedicated the locals are, the masters and professionals are, in coming up with innovative ways to make their industry stand out.
In fact, that's so even though we are talking about disturbances into the global trade.
But the worry about not getting raw materials really is minimal.
But again, they have that curiosity in what they do and they're trying to come up with new ways to do it.
And the next step is Polonia, as Master Zhang Wei Yi mentioned earlier, and Phoebe yes, Polonia.
The reason why he did that was because well, unlike Yushan, who may have been very familiar with western kind of musical instruments, Master Zhang Weiyi says Polonia is more commonly used in Chinese musical instruments.
And he believes that well, if he's based in Guizhou, he's based in China and he being such a good guitar artist, in fact, he would like to see whether he can use the local tree, the local material that is often very widely used in making Chinese instruments, to use them in the manufacturing process of Western instruments as well.
That's awesome.
Yeah, those luteans locally.
They are really serious about how they're crafting their guitars, how they are customizing their products especially for you.
Know, the artists you mentioned, like Mr Zhang Weiyi and all the other, say master luteans.
That's based in Zhejiang County.
They calculate the distance between the fret and the string by millimeters.
Mr Zhang.
He said that the perfect say height between a string and the fret of a guitar for your finger to feel comfortable pressing down on the string is two millimeters.
And he's trying to adjust that to be even closer so that, while playing it, the musicians themselves can feel at ease when they're playing, manipulating the strings.
Because yeah yeah, he make a lot of customized guitars for the world-renowned, international famous musicians all around the world and maybe each of them have different preferences on how they they'd like to press on their guitar, how they prefer to perform, so all of that is within their consideration while crafting one.
I found that really fascinating.
This kind of passion is not only towards the industry.
I mean, we've been through several cities and counties our entire journey here with China Horizons.
We've been to the beautiful Miao people's villages.
We've been to the dry pepper markets sneezing and coughing a lot, but feeling the heat and passion of local people towards the industry.
But people's passion also is showcased about their hometowns, about their own cultures.
We see masters trying to include local culture, like Lai Ming said So for the silverware as inlay, he tried to embed it into a beautiful, beautiful I've seen that guitar.
It is a very luxurious guitar that I'm pretty sure I cannot afford.
And also he's using Batik and Miao embroidery on different, for example, the band of the guitar, so that you can hand it up and you know, play very freely.
So those type of passion is also quite moving to me.
And everyone nowadays is talking about technology.
Technology is a part of their innovation as well.
I've seen the guitar that is soundless.
The guitar generates no sound because the sound is transferred through Bluetooth or a cable into your speaker.
So you do not really have to bother other people if you've only learned it for two months and you do not know how to play.
I'm referring to myself again.
You can plug it with your headset and the poor sound you make can only be heard by yourself.
So you're not disturbing anybody.
So it's a silent guitar.
That is technology.
It's big and friendly. as neighbor friendly as well.
So that is the kind of innovation that's happening.
They're also using artificial intelligence as well as other smart technologies.
Well, they have chips.
At the factory that we visited, we saw a guitar that's very smart and it comes with chips embedded.
So not only does it allow the guitar to connect to a wireless speaker, It also allows you to use pre-programmed tunes stored on the chip.
So when you're playing alone, it may sound like you are a one-man band.
The accompaniment can come through the guitar and it really is fascinating.
I envy kids nowadays because, to start with, if you're in Zheng'an, you get to go to a lot of different classes learning guitar.
But that's people in Zheng'an.
If you're not in Zheng'an County, if you're not that lucky still, you get to download an app developed by a guitar manufacturer and it can tell you what to do.
It's happening to a lot of music instruments as well, the relatively easier ones, guitar and piano.
You can learn through music. the app with the guitar and they're all paired up.
It's very smart.
It tells you which, for instance, of course, you're not doing well enough.
Yeah.
It's the punishment.
It's telling you how to prove yourself, which are the ones that you should practice a bit more.
So it's quite smart.
I wish I had something like that at the age of four.
Probably my mom wouldn't have picked violin for me, but I don't know.
And they also allow people, or they also allow the factories, to find their upstream industrial partners and also downstream partners.
They've invited a lot of different types of enterprises in and they've created a logistic company area in the industrial park.
I believe it's just 50 metres away from where we are recording this, within the same industrial park.
As we drove to the cultural museum, we caught a glimpse of the logistics service and we saw trucks after trucks.
And, well, it makes sense because unlike a regular museum, shopping platform or a shopping depot.
Guitars, they are big.
Yeah, I don't think you can dismember them before you send them away.
Right.
So the package can be huge.
And it's interesting to learn, in fact, from Master Zhang Wei Yi that when he's ordering raw materials from Guangzhou, which is a major port that imports a lot of raw materials from overseas, he can get it within one day, as according to himself.
Oh also, i noticed the detail when he does that the transport fee account for for, let's say, 100.
If the transfer fee account for 100 yuan, then the transport fee sending the final product back would cost only 50 yuan.
And that is because of the local support.
Local government is supporting different industries in different ways, including making sure that there are delivery factories here in the area, making it easy for factories to send their products back.
And also they're inviting different talents back to the industrial factory, industrial park so that they can communicate with each other and work with each other and develop better more, even higher-end guitars.
In fact we've seen that here in this industrial park there is one American luthier being introduced and being invited into the industrial park.
And our reporter Yang Yang has talked to him.
Let's give it a look.
And good afternoon, Mr. Hendrick.
Could you tell me a little bit more about yourself?
I'm from the US and I've been in the guitar business for 40 almost 50 years and traveled the world.
And I've made guitars in every country that makes guitars.
And right now, China is the dominating country for guitars.
And so this is the last of my trips will be here in China.
When I was young, I liked real mass production.
You know, lots and lots of numbers and the dynamic of producing.
But now it's more just, it's my guitars and this facility.
And I think being older has helped me make a better guitar because I'm slower.
I'm not distracted by nightlife and fun things.
It started in Japan and then it, moved into Korea.
And from Korea, I went to India, Indonesia, and China.
China was a little slower in the beginning, but became stronger.
And so these days, it's now between China and Indonesia.
And it's a little bit counterintuitive that the factories who are the youngest need the most help, just like children, I guess.
They have higher volumes, big production volumes, low price.
But you need to put your best on those factories.
And what brings you here?
I mean.
To me, Zheng An County seems like a remote place, and I didn't know much about it before this interview.
So why you're here?
First of all, it's a beautiful place.
Chongqing is near here, Zunyi, other cities.
I think for most young people that this probably is not a place they'd want to go.
But again, at my age this is where I want to live and die here because this is Guitar City.
I mean this is really what I've worked for and involved with my whole life.
And I don't have distractions like I'm not building a family.
I'm not thinking about a lot of different things now.
I'm just having fun building the guitars.
And the government invited me here is how I came here.
I probably.
When it was time to come here.
It was right after COVID, but I was going to go to Malaysia because I like Malaysia a lot.
It's beautiful.
But my friends said, who had moved here, come on up, see, talk to the government.
And that's how I got here.
Yeah, and after you got here, do you find it's a good place to make guitar?
Weather's really good for guitar making.
Because today is cloudy, but generally the average for the year is less humidity, more balanced climate, 65 humidity 70, maybe between 50 and 65.
So that's good.
Whereas Guangzhou and the seaside, Xiamen I mean Xiamen Guangzhou, Shandong is a little bit too humid for really making guitars, even though they've been doing it for years.
And Well, you've been China or here for like a long time.
So Have you witnessed any change here?
You never know this country from day to day changes every every year.
I heard in China this I heard in China that You'd have to say when?
Was that last month?
It could be completely different.
Look how fast Chongqing has built into this unbelievable dynamic city.
And Guangzhou too.
When I first went to Guangzhou, I lived near the airport, Huadu, a real nice area now.
That place had dirt roads and you'd never see a car.
I used to drive from Shenzhen to Guangzhou and there was no cars on the highway.
Today, it's completely flooded.
China is just dynamic, always changing.
That, to me, is a very hard thing to explain to other people.
It's a living, breathing machine, China is.
Whereas, I have to say, in my country, it's kind of a dying machine.
Or a slowing down machine.
I have plenty of time to slow down when I'm dead.
I enjoy working and moving as long as I can.
Well, let's move to guitar making.
Every country that starts guitars.
They go through about 10 years of playing these kind of guitars because it starts in the university with some simple music, love songs, and China's already been there.
They've been in that 10 years and it exploded in China, this guitar.
But China's changing so fast.
And now it's turned electric.
And the market for these is still good if you're high quality.
And overall the market for this type of instrument has slowed down.
And now electric guitars are taking like crazy.
Look at the kids today, you know.
You see girls playing drums.
Yeah, electric music supports the industry a little better than this kind of music, these kind of instruments.
Because once you get an electric guitar, you have to buy an amplifier, then you have to have microphones and you have to buy all the accessories, which helps other industries.
And so your question about where it's going in China.
China's going to be the biggest guitar market, music market in the world.
It's just, we are, but the education is not in the U.S. anymore.
China, like I said, is going to be the largest market in the world because you have 700 million middle class 700 million.
Is that right?
Middle class buyers in this country.
It's a lot.
It's a lot.
It's twice the size of the U.S.
And you have a better education system.
I mean in this small town you can go into the city square and you'll see 30 people playing guitar and drums.
I mean, it's just unbelievable the level of education, beginning education.
And that's a cultural thing, too.
Chinese, Asian people... have always been starting from very young.
Speaking of the accessories you just mentioned for buying an electric guitar, for example, when you make guitars in the factory and if you have some accessories or components or any tools you want to buy, how do you get them?
You have to understand that most of the tools we buy in the U.S. were made here.
That even though they're specialty tools and we may have designed them, they were still made here.
So if I have a picture, I want this tool, they can find it here on the phone.
Because I certainly can't explain it.
You mean on the internet?
Yes, yes.
So online shopping?
Online.
You order them online?
As we all know, everything that is made in this world right now, some of it is made here in China.
So even if it has an American brand, a French brand, a German brand, it's still here.
Now that factory might be exclusively selling to the US, But everything in the world that I want is here.
It's made here.
I just have to find it.
Do you find it convenient to make guitar here?
Yeah, it's the reason I stay here.
To be honest, that's the number one reason.
In the West and I say this for every Western-style country they think it's because of exploitation of labor, cheap labor.
It's not.
It's because the infrastructure that there's.
Look at all the wood in this factory, you can see if i need five pieces of this beautiful wood, i can easily go find five pieces out of ten thousand.
Or in this town for me to buy the raw materials is so simple.
But in the in the west i have to order all these things and it's and they're from a lot of different countries, So that's really time consuming.
And now with our tariffs, it's really a headache.
But here, it's all here.
Wood that we use for this guitar is also used for a lot of different items here, furniture mainly.
So that the input of African wood, we use a lot of African wood, is very abundant.
You can go Guangzhou Shenzhen anywhere, and there'll be a wood market to where you can get all these beautiful woods.
But we can't get.
You can't find it over there like that.
To answer your question.
I'm here mainly because of the infrastructure, that it makes my life easier.
And WeChat, I love WeChat.
Sorry, I just had to throw that in there.
It's easy for me here to make things work.
When I call home to my daughter, for example In the West, they're always preparing to prepare, in preparation for the weekend.
I mean, they spend a lot of time thinking about the weekend.
Well, in this factory, I'm working on the weekend.
And I'm 67.
And I'm still working.
And everybody in this factory is working because they want to make a better life.
They're not exploited or mistreated.
They enjoy coming here and being around each other and making money, as opposed to sitting home and doing nothing.
So I find that really admirable.
Yeah.
That everybody likes to work and they work hard.
Well, the factory manager told me that Natasha makes high-end guitar and some, like you know, foreign customers really like it, even if it's priced a little bit high.
Completely.
It already has.
It was here before I got here.
But the fact that the government, you know they started on this path and they've gotten so big that it's going to be difficult for them to change the path.
And I think as the economy gets a little bit better, things stabilize, there'll probably be more factories coming here.
We just, you know, after being hit with COVID, and then now this thing.
It's been unstable for a while.
So I think it was kind of in this trajectory, but it kind of stalled a bit.
But I get lots of support from the government, meaning with my work permits visas, I mean they know why I'm here and they care why I'm here.
Generally, I could go to some other cities, and I would be just another foreigner.
We're about to break into the summer, and there will be music every week here.
I mean, it really becomes alive in the town.
And in that respect, I think they market that pretty well.
For me, I live right next to the guitar park, so sometimes it's loud noise, but that's because I'm getting old.
Yeah, there's definitely a culture here that makes me feel more comfortable.
And it's really admirable for me to see a country like this.
I wish more people could see this kind of stuff so they would get a better understanding of China that this can happen, you know.
It's not just about the jobs.
It's about the music itself and people learning to play the music and learning what they're making.
I mean, there's a whole world going on here that I wish the rest of the world would see.
That was Yang Yang with Curtis Hendrick.
He's a passionate man.
I know.
I appreciate his optimism in the Chinese market, in China's guitar industry and also the prospect of Zheng An as the guitar city, because here in China we've been following news about trade arguments, trade disputes, tariffs and the trend of anti-globalization.
Also in the past few years the industry has been hit by COVID because of the global trade and stuff.
So we might feel concerned about how well they've been doing in the past few years and where the industry might end up in the next 5 or 10 years.
But it's interesting to hear his observation, him having spent decades in the guitar making industry, knowing very well how industries and companies are supposed to grow in different countries at different stages of development.
So I appreciate his optimism and especially his reference to the 7 million middle-income families and also the progress in China's education system, enabling young kids to get exposed and grow their interest in music.
So that really convinced me that there's a lot more going on in the future for Zheng An and for China's guitar industry.
He is quite persuasive.
I mean, I feel like Zheng An County is very inviting.
I've only been here for two days and it grows on you.
You hear the music sound everywhere.
And he's commented about summer is approaching.
More and more people are coming to the parks, coming to these squares the guitar square to play guitar.
And you can hear the ones that are really good.
And the ones that are not that good at playing guitar, especially for these years.
I mean, it's not only the music they're playing, but also maybe the quality of the guitar.
I cannot imagine being not disturbing those people who are playing a bad guitar.
If I were him, I would say, no, no, no, no, no.
Stop using that one.
Use one that I made.
I'm making better one.
Something like that.
But the atmosphere of the entire county is quite different. different from other places.
We talk about the nature of a city.
We talk about the foundation or the character of a county.
And here, definitely, guitar is rooted in the character of Zheng An County.
They held a lot of different activities, inviting guitar to people's lives.
They would even held different courses like we talked about a bit earlier.
If you're here in Zheng An, it's really easy for you to find a class learning how to play guitars.
And there's something I learned as well.
I realized that for people working in guitar industries, they like to attend different expos.
They like to keep up with the trend of the development of the guitar manufacturing industry around the world.
They attend more than eight to 10 expos every year, and they go to different ones.
They talk to each other, they find their buyers and also the sellers, and they communicate.
Communication is important.
It inspires It gives you new ideas and it creates opportunities.
I think we should talk more to each other and find out the best out of the best in the industry.
Talk to them, learn from them, communicate with your peers, collect your peers, find your peers.
And that might just be the way to success, not only for guitar, but also for all of us.
And that brings us to the end of today's roundtable.
Roundtable these days is in Guizhou province in southwest China.
It is also China Horizon's special campaign reporting the local stories and fun people and fun manufacturing industries here in the country.
Maybe in the future we'll go to different provinces and visit different people.
And hopefully you stay on the other side of the camera.
Thank you very much.
I'm Niu Honglin with Lai Ming and Yushan.
We will see you next time.
Bye bye.
