THE BLIND ERHU PLAYER

On a chilly night in October 1996, I walked into a hot pot (Chinese fondue) restaurant on Wangjianmu Street in Chengdu. After I sat down, I saw a waiter leading a blind street musician inside. The musician was holding an erhu, a two-stringed Chinese violin, and feeling his way around the tables. He kept bowing to customers. I felt so sorry for him and ordered a tune. To my surprise, he played it beautifully.

The erhu player said he was sixty-three and refused to disclose his real name. He called himself “Nameless Zhang.”

LIAO YIWU: Master, you played so beautifully. Could you play me another tune, “Water from the River”?

NAMELESS ZHANG: You need to pay first. According to the rules here, you pay ten yuan per tune.

LIAO: Here is fifty yuan [US$6.40]. Please feel it and make sure it's authentic. Normally speaking, one cannot put a price on music. That's all I can afford. I need to leave some to pay for my meal.

ZHANG: Sir, you are a pro. If you want to hear more, I can play for you all night long. Playing the erhu is like a writer burning the midnight oil. The longer you play, the more you are into it. “Water from the River” is such a sad piece. Why don't I play you “Chirpy Birds on the Empty Mountain”?

LIAO: That's fine. Here is a toast to you. Throughout my life, I have loved two kinds of musical instruments: one is the erhu and the other, the flute. Look at the erhu; it only has two strings, but can express all the stories and emotions of human life. I grew up in Lijaping village, which was hemmed in on three sides by mountains. We used to live in a little run-down courtyard house at the foot of the mountain. When I see you play, all my childhood memories come crowding back. I remember a village teacher who liked to sit on the threshold of his house on rainy days and play the erhu. He also played it when the moon was out. His music always evoked in me a melancholy mood. Nowadays, I can only hear his music in my head.

ZHANG: Your remarks make me cry. I have been selling music on the street for many years now. I can play all kinds of tunes with various techniques. But the majority of listeners have no ear for good music. They are just pretentious eaters who are simply looking for fun and something to enliven the atmosphere. I could handle their requests very easily. But playing music for a pro like you makes me nervous. The music has to come from my heart.

LIAO: Tell me about yourself. How did you lose your eyesight?

ZHANG: As soon as I was pulled out of my mother's womb, I began to struggle in the dark. I don't know what sins they had committed, but all my three siblings were born blind. My family had a reputation in the region as “a cursed dark hole.” When I was three years old, my father thrust an erhu into my hand, and forced me with a whip to practice. Playing the erhu was a blind person's rice bowl. It was not as romantic as you have just described. When I turned seven, my parents couldn't stand the fact that all their children had been born blind. They both swallowed poison and committed suicide. At their funeral, I was draped in a white mourning outfit; I sat beside their bodies and played the erhu nonstop. I was hoping to get enough donations and buy coffins for them. I sat there and played for three days. Their bodies were decaying and I was also on the verge of exhaustion. But I didn't dare to stop, feeling as if a whip were hanging over my head. Even now, I still associate my memories of my father with that thin whip that inflicted so much pain on me. Eventually, friends helped bury my parents. My siblings and I were adopted by another blind family. At the age of thirteen, I began to wander around the street to make a living as a musician. I started out in my hometown, Qiaolai, and then traveled all over the province.

LIAO: Is it easy to move around for a person like you?

ZHANG: Blind people have their own community. Each time I arrive at a new place, I have to pay my respects to the chief of the local community. I butter him up with flattering words, and then hand over some money as a gift. With this bribe, he will designate a blind kid to be my guide. The kid will lead me down boulevards and small lanes with instructions about where to make a turn and who lives where. He will also tell me which household is rich and more likely to hire musicians, what the temperaments of people in the household are, and when is a good time to visit. There are rules for everything. By the time you memorize them you can start your own business.

LIAO: Those must have been the rules and customs before the Communist revolution. We are now at the end of the twentieth century. There are street artists everywhere, some singing and playing musical instruments, others performing acrobatics. They don't seem to follow any rules. Most of them change venues constantly. If they see a busy area, they start their gigs right there. Sometimes, the police will kick them out. During the holiday season last year, five blind musicians showed up in front of my house with their erhus, and together they played “The Sun Comes Out and People Are Happy.” I ended up giving each one a red envelope with crisp new bills in it.

ZHANG: They were not real musicians. Ours is a big city. Fake musicians wander from district to district, swindling money out of residents. We do have rules within our community. Street musicians are gradually forming a guild with professional rules. Everyone is hoping to make money with real skills. The market for quacks and fake products is getting smaller.

LIAO: What do you mean by “professional rules”?

ZHANG: First, street musicians need to have their own fixed venues or territories. Second, street musicians need to elect their own guild chiefs. In China, everyone used to belong to a government work unit, which offered them jobs and housing. Street musicians also need to be organized and regulated. For example: I've been playing music near the Wangjianmu area for almost seven years. Everyone recognizes me and knows that I treat my music seriously. People are willing to order tunes from me and pay for them. I'm sure you'll see blind musicians in other areas such as Chunxi Road or Wuhou Temple Road. I don't care and have no intention of finding out who is performing down there. All I care is to do a good job here. I assume street guitarists, violinists, beggars, bicycle repairers, or shoeshine boys in this territory will share my view. If someday we want to move to another territory at random, we have to negotiate. Otherwise, we could be kicked out.

LIAO: Aren't you worried about the hard economic times when restaurants around here close down one after another?

ZHANG: I have known many restaurants to close, but that hasn't affected me that much. I have never been short of clients. There are many entrepreneurs who dream of making it big in the restaurant business. The closing of one store means the opening of another one. This area never remains idle. When a Chinese restaurant closes down, a Western restaurant opens up in its place. A seafood restaurant closes down, a hot pot joint opens. The Wangjianmu area used to be the burial site for a young emperor during ancient times. It has good feng shui and is full of prosperous human spirits. In the summertime, the hot pot vendors line up the street, and it's hard to squeeze by. While I perform there, the smell of spices is very distracting to my sense of surroundings. There is the danger of me walking right onto someone's hot pot stove. When all the hot pots are boiling and set in motion, so is my music, which is sometimes lost in the din of the street. I asked a friend to get a speaker for me. I hook up the erhu to the speaker. I carry the speaker on my back while I play. I'll do anything to make restaurant goers happy so I can make some money.

LIAO: Don't you feel you are wasting your life playing here?

ZHANG: My life? I have never pondered these profound issues. For a blind person like me, every day is the same, unless I get sick or injure myself by bumping into a wall. When I was fifteen, I was playing at a teahouse one day. Suddenly, firecrackers filled the air like ear-shattering bombs, and completely drowned out the sound of my music. I didn't stop and kept playing until the owner grabbed my hand. He said the teahouse was empty and everyone was gone. I felt my way outside. People were beating gongs and drums. I was told that the Communist troops had entered the city. That was it. Didn't realize the Nationalist government had been toppled. Later on, after the Communist government was established, I was given some money and sent back, along with many migrant workers, to the countryside in Sichuan. I was assigned to work as a musician for a local cultural bureau. I spent a year learning Braille and I even had a girlfriend.

LIAO: How did you get yourself a girlfriend?

ZHANG: That was 1957. Folk music was in. The tunes by the well-known blind erhu performer and composer Aibing were very popular in China. I rode on the popularity of Aibing, and was invited to perform on the stage for a large crowd. I also played for some music professors. One company made records of my music. Then local officials wanted me to recruit a student. I told them that I didn't want anyone who had normal eyesight. Those who could see would never have the opportunity to enter the world of the blind.

So they sent me a female blind student, who was three years younger. We practiced day and night to prepare for performances at folk music concerts. One day around noontime, I was taking a nap. I felt something moving on my face. At first, I thought it was a fly, and tried to chase it away with my hands. Then, I touched a soft hand, the fingers caressing my nose and my eyes, sending burning sensations all the way to my heart. I reached out my hands and touched her as if I were in a dream. Her braids were so thick, her eyes were so big, her eyelashes were so long, and her skin was so smooth. We finally embraced and held each other close. Around that time, my music reached a peak. I didn't feel that I was playing. I felt as if someone inside my heart were playing for me. I could see my lover in my music. She was beautiful. Wouldn't it be nice if I could take her with me to wander around the world?

LIAO: Did you get married? Did you have children?

ZHANG: We had sex and she became pregnant. During those years, premarital sex was considered immoral and illegal. You could end up in jail for that. Since we were disabled people, the director at my work unit didn't prosecute us. But he forced my girlfriend to have an abortion so we could avoid bad repercussions among the masses. But we wanted the baby and my girlfriend refused to undertake the procedure. We applied for a marriage license. The director said that it was a special case and he needed to have meetings to discuss it. After several meetings, he still couldn't make a decision. Meanwhile, my girlfriend's pregnancy was getting more and more prominent.

Not long after, Chairman Mao's anti-Rightist movement started. My director was labeled a Rightist, and he lost his job. Some of his former subordinates charged that my girlfriend had been impregnated by the director. They didn't think a blind person like me could have sex with a woman. We never got the marriage license, but instead ended up being the target of public humiliation. I was labeled a corrupt element of society because I tried to defend my director. Thank God I was blind; otherwise I would have been tortured to death by those fanatics. My student had a harder life. Several guys pinned her down and coerced her into having an abortion. She was also labeled as a degenerate element of society for having sex with the director.

LIAO: What happened later?

ZHANG: We broke up. It was fate and I couldn't escape. It would have been different if it had happened today. People's attitude toward sex is different. Also, if a blind person can marry another blind person, wouldn't it be a perfect match? It could help solve many social problems. At that time, the whole country was like a big prison. The Party controlled every aspect of our life—eating, drinking, pissing, shitting, birth, marriage, and death. By the way, my student died in the famine of 1960.

LIAO: People are more open-minded than before. Dating and premarital sex are no longer political issues. You are also free to sell your music on the street. I assume nobody asks you to pay license fees.

ZHANG: Pay a license fee? To whom? I think the government should impose a social welfare tax to support people like us. I've been laid off from the Cultural Bureau since the 1960s. If it hadn't been for those political campaigns, I would have been a celebrity and probably a professor at the Chinese Academy of Music. They have an erhu department, you know.

LIAO: What's so special about being a professor? No profession grants you more freedom than that of a street musician.

ZHANG: Being a street musician without any professional affiliations is nice, but not stable. You never know what will happen the next day. By the way, why don't you start to “enjoy” this freedom?

LIAO: With you being my guide, I will start enjoying this freedom tomorrow. I will bring my flute and let's do a duet together. You can collect all the money. I hope you can introduce me to more blind musicians.

ZHANG: Why?

LIAO: I want to find an agent who can help us find sponsors and organize a blind musicians' concert. If you can get twenty blind musicans, we can make it happen.

ZHANG: Good idea. I will go back and discuss it with the head of the guild.

LIAO: Are you telling me that there is another blind musican older than you are?

ZHANG: No, he is younger and he is not blind. He is the head of the local triad, who controls this territory. We call him “Mr. Big Guy for the Blind.” He is the only one who can go and negotiate with musicans at the Wuhou Temple Road, Chunxi Road, and the Western Gate Bus Terminal areas. By the way, do you have money? He charges a lot of money for the service.

LIAO: Don't be too obsessed with money. It ruins my initial impression of your erhu music.

ZHANG: It's getting late. Let me start playing.