From LA Times:
For more than 10 years, Wu Hong Fang’s days have been filled with the same gentle sound, the quick chafe of sandpaper on spruce and maple. Working briskly, methodically, her hands a dusty blur, she sands violins all day, six days a week.
There is a rhythm to what she does, but you wouldn’t call it music. Wu laughs when she’s asked whether she feels any connection to the melodies these violins will one day produce.
“Basically,” she says, “it’s a living.” Wu earns about $100 a month working for Taixing Fengling Musical Instrument Co., the largest violin maker in the world. Its low-slung, low-tech factory sprawls over the center of this once-sleepy farm town in southeastern China.[Full Text]
– Also Forbes Asia magazine’s Piano Man about China’s state-owned Pearl River pianos estabishing reputation and challenging Yamaha’s market position in the U.S.
