The Island of Music
Gulangyu Island, in the Fujian Province, is located off the coast opposite and is known as “The Island of Music”. There are six hundred pianos on the island with a population of only twenty thousand people. During the 1840s, foreign missionaries and other Europeans brought their pianos and musical traditions with them to Gulangyu Island. Most of the people living on the island were Christians who went to church on Sundays to hear scripture readings. Children joined school bands and church choirs. On their weekends, families had their own small music concerts where every family member played a part. The fate of everyone from the island is somehow tied to music. Take for instance the story of a retired female teacher. The Christian school she attended as a child, held a gymnastics competition every year. She wanted to be the piano accompanist for the athletes during the competition, but her family was very poor ad couldn’t afford a piano. When she was about to retire, she was finally able to buy a piano even though this took all of her strength and resources. She studied for a year until she mastered the song “Maiden’s Prayer,” which was accompanying piece for the competition of her childhood. The tradition of family concerts has existed on the island for over a hundred years. There are regulations restricting motorized vehicles and even bicycles so, the only sound you hear are the waves of the ocean, the chirping of birds and the music of pianos, or voices, raised in song.
The piano museum and Gulangyu Island’s Poetry Festival
China’s only piano museum is located in Shuzhuang Garden where a clooection of over 70 pianos and a hundred piano lamps are on display. The pianos come from Europe, America and Australia. Mr. Hu Youyi is the museum’s curator who originally hails from Xiamen but grew up in Australia. He traveled the world to select the museun’s priceless collection of pianos. The pianos were sent from Mr. Hu Youyi’s Australian home to the Museum in Xiamen where they were carefully repaired and restored. The most recent addition to the museum’s collection is a pipe organ built in 1872.
On the 31st of May every year, Xiamen’s Gulangyu Island holds an annual Poetry Festival. The festival presents a program of music concerts, poetry debates, poetry recitations and sessions for impromptu poetry composition. The festival attracts attendees from all around the globe. The Shuzhuang Poetry Society was established in 1914 by a wealthy businessman, Lin Erjia. The Society had three hundred members at its outset and existed for over thirty years. The local female poet, Shu Ting, was a major force in upholding the poetic tradition of Gulangyu Island. In the 1980s, she captured the hearts of the entire nation with her romantic poems, “To the Oak” and “Brigantines.”
The old buildings of Gulangyu Island
The landscape of Gulangyu Island is heavenly and there are more than a thousand, hundred year old buildings to be seen. Xiamen became a foreign concession in 1840 when the Opium Wars came to an end. Thirteen foreign nations established consulates on Gulangyu Island and merchants from every country came to live there. The oldest buildings still standing on Gulangyu Island were those built by the foreign merchants. During the 1920s and 30s, many overseas Chinese returned to live in the area and, over the next 15 years, they built more than a thousand villas. For the Chinese who returned to the island, these villas were a place of refuge and solace in their difficult lives. The sugar tycoon, Huang Yizhu, built the most luxurious villa known as “The Huang Family Mansion” and has been called China’s first villa. The architecture is often a fusion of Western and Chinese style. The Eight Trigrams Building was constructed in 1907 and is a red building in the style of a mosque. Its dome is inscribed with the ancient Chinese chart of the Eight Trigrams. The residents here participated in church services, music concerts, dance performances, athletic competitions and all sorts of other interesting activities. Their sons and daughters attend schools by the churches. Many musicians, writers, doctors and educators have emerged from this small island, including the literary giant, Lin Yutang. However, now these buildings are no longer homes to anyone.
The life of Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang (1895-1976) completed his elementary and middle school education in the parochial schools of Gulangyu Island. Hia English-language novel “My Country and My People” was published in America in 1935. It is considered a classic that seeks to explain the Chinese culture to the West. Lin Yutang introduced “幽默yōu mò”, the transliteration of the English word “humor”, to the Chinese language. His most famous joke was, “I believe world civilization can be built only upon the common basis of international living…The ideal life…to live in an English cottage, with American heating, and have a Japanese wife, a French mistress, and a Chinese cook.”
Lin Yutang’s wife, Liao Cuifeng, grew up in a Christian home on Gulangyu Island and was a very practical person. When the couple traveled to the Acropolis in Athens, Lin Yutang couldn’t help but exclaim aloud about the greatness of Greek civilization. Cuifeng said, “I wouldn’t live here. If you wanted to buy a bar of soap you’d have to climb down a mountain. How inconvenient!” It was lucky that Lin Yutang had such a practical partner. He said, “I am like a balloon. If she didn’t hold on to me, who knows where I would go.” He is also known to have commented, “of us two people living together, a talented poet and a reliable and skilled wife, it is the wife shoes wisdom far exceeds that of her husband.”
Snacks
Many of the local snacks were imported from Southeast Asia by Chinese returning to the area and some have existed unchanged for decades. The people f Xiamen has three requirements for their food. The first is freshness. A favorite is fresh seafood, dipped briefly in boiling water and garnished with vinegar and a few sprigs of ginger. By preparing it this way, nothing is done to obscure or spoil the freshness of the seafood. Many housewives go to the seaside markets every morning to ensure they get fresh seafood. The second requirement they have for their food is skilled preparation. Most recipes for Xiamen’s specialty snacks have been passed down through the generations. To an outsider they might appear simple, but the preparation often requires a keen attention to detail. The third requirement for their food is that they must take time to savor it properly. People can be seen in the street side cafes around the city as they chat from sunset to the middle of the right and slowly savor their dinner.