CHINA TOUR 1981-82

In 1981, the Audubon Quartet was invited to teach and give concerts in The People’s Republic of China. This was a ground-breaking honor, as we were the first American string quartet to receive such an opportunity. In 1972, President Richard Nixon visited the Mainland, normalizing diplomatic relations between the US and China. A year later the Philadelphia Orchestra became the first American Symphony Orchestra to be invited, and in 1979, violinist Isaac Stern made a concert tour of China, resulting in the award-winning documentary, “From Mao to Mozart”.

As it happened, around that time I had been presented a 2-stringed bowed Chinese instrument (the Erhu), as a wedding gift from my father-in-law, Chen Kwong Yiu. Along with the instrument, I he gave me a cassette recording of a Chinese performer playing traditional works composed for the Erhu, which I set about learning. In 1980, when the Audubon was playing a concert in New York, I had the chance to play these pieces on the Erhu for Professor Tan Shuzhen, who was visiting Columbia University. Dr. Tan was a violinist, violin-maker, and also the Deputy Director of the Shanghai Conservatory.  Afterward, I asked the program director of the Center for United States-China Arts Exchange at Columbia whether it might be possible for the Quartet to visit China. So it came to be that we received an invitation from the Chinese Ministry of Culture to perform and teach in Mainland China.

On Christmas day in 1981, the members of the Audubon Quartet, accompanied by Virginia Tech colleague and music historian, Michael Saffle, boarded Pan Am Flight No.1 leaving Kennedy Airport, heading to Beijing. Michael Saffle’s informative article about our trip is included here. After intermediate stops in Tokyo and Hong Kong, we arrived in Beijing in the middle of the night on December 28th, 1981. We were met by an official from the Ministry of Culture and an interpreter, and driven to the Minzu Hotel in downtown Beijing, not far from the Central Conservatory.

Unable to sleep after such an exciting and exhausting trip, I arose early in the morning to look out our hotel window to see the sun rising over a snow-covered main street, with plumes of coal fired smoke rising from chimneys far and wide.

However, shortly after we had all awakened we were met by the same ministry official who had greeted us at the airport who informed us that we might not be allowed to stay because the newly elected Reagan Administration had decided to sell jet fighter planes to Taiwan. We attempted to reassure him that we were merely musicians, not part of the political fabric, and that we had no stake in any military deal made by our newly elected U.S. president. At the time of our arrival in China there was no U.S. Embassy, but only a U.S. Mission, established in 1979. During our visit we never did knowingly meet an official from the United States Government. There was, however, a Caucasian man incongruously dressed in a long trench coat, who appeared on stage with us after our concert at the Chinese National Theater in Shanghai, on January 14, 1982. We were not introduced, and to this day we have no clue as to his identity. Our assumption was that he was a U.S. Government official who had followed us to our concert.

We received generous financial support from many sources to make this trip, and the Shar Products Company in Ann Arbor gave us all new instrument travel cases. As well, they sent “gift boxes” filled with strings and instrument supplies for the students, all clearly labeled “Shar Products”, which we took to China with us.  This was a convenient way to advertise their brand to the potentially emergent Chinese market!

Our first meetings with the director of the Beijing Conservatory, Zhao Feng, and members of his faculty took place shortly after we arrived.  We were introduced to everyone and given a detailed schedule of activities and duties that we were expected to fulfill.  We then unloaded the boxes of gifts that we had transported for Shar Products.

A decision had been made by the Conservatory administration for Dennis Cleveland and me to work with an “all boys” student quartet and for Doris Lederer and Sharon Polifrone to work with an “all girls” quartet.  The conservatory planned to send these young quartets to the upcoming Portsmouth International String Quartet Competition in England, where we had been prizewinners in 1979.

The Chinese Ministry of Culture printed programs, which were distributed all performance locations in Beijing and Shanghai

From Beijing we flew to Shanghai to visit the Conservatory there.  We were excited to meet Professor Tan Shuzhen again, as well as his faculty and the Conservatory students.

Our teaching experience in Shanghai was quite different from Beijing. The Beijing students, who were normally attired in Mao-style jackets, were instructed to don western style clothing for their sessions with us. They were probably surprised to see us in jeans and work shirts! Talk about cross- cultural misconceptions! In keeping with their special dress – clearly meant as deference to our presumed Western expectations – the Beijing students were extravagantly polite, attentive, effusively thankful, and appeared to be soaking up our every word and gesture.

In contrast, the Shanghai students seemed much more cosmopolitan in both their personal mannerisms and outward appearance. They were already wearing Western-style clothing, and seemed to be quite comfortable in our presence. Regardless of the attire chosen by or for the Chinese students, we were there to do serious work with very serious music students.

The day we arrived in Shanghai the temperature was a mild 70 degrees Fahrenheit.  We were taken to the Red Star Hotel, which was used only for Westerners and other tourists. My recollection was that most of the other guests comprised a large tour group from Japan. At the time, no public building south of the Yangtze River was heated. The next day we awoke to a surprise attack of freezing temperatures.  Thankfully, rooms in the Red Star Hotel were heated for the benefit of foreign guests.  Before a concert, Sharon Polifrone can be seen resting in the comfort of her warm room.

As in Beijing, we played concerts at the Conservatory for the faculty and students and in Shanghai, we concluded our visit with a public performance at a famous old European-style hall, originally known as the Nanking Theater, built in 1930 and then renamed the Shanghai Theater in 1959.  This performance was where the mysterious man in the trench coat appeared onstage with us during our curtain calls.

Our Chinese hosts in Beijing were extremely gracious and wanted to make sure that we had the experience of seeing some of China’s revered sites, including the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. We were also taken into the vast Tiananmen Square where we were quickly surrounded by a large number of curious, gawking Chinese citizens, who wanted the chance to “shout out” a few words of English. Immediately next to me was a young couple with two children, a boy and a girl. We must have been quite a strange sight to these children, who had tears in their eyes, but the little girl was obviously crying with fear.  From my shoulder bag, I pulled out a string of firecrackers, which I had planned to ignite myself, and handed it to the little boy.  For the little girl, I found a banana that I had stored, thinking it would come in handy later in the day.  Both gifts were accepted with smiles of gratitude. Thinking back on this experience, I assume that the couple must have been field laborers, who were allowed to have more than one child.  I wonder who and where those sweet children are today, and if they have any recollection of that day four decades ago.

When we visited the Great Wall, we certainly needed our winter coats!  During our visit to Shanghai, we were taken to the famous Bund, which was formerly the international section of the city.    Doris Lederer, or possibly her colorful coat drew quite a bit of attention in Shanghai, from passersby.

Another memorable adventure provided by the Chinese was a train journey to Wuxi, a city close to Shanghai, near one of China’s largest freshwater lakes. Nice walks had been planned for us, but clutching cups of really hot tea at each stop along the way was our primary concern! We saw large citrus groves, of special interest to me, since members of my family were citrus farmers in Florida. We were driven to a large silk factory, where everyone was given small silk coin holders. One of the more memorable experiences included dinning at a Buddhist restaurant – the food was totally vegetarian and impossible to differentiate from the meat products they imitated.

This historic Audubon Quartet experience is filled with many personal memories, especially those of personal contact with aspiring young Chinese musicians.  The hospitality of the Chinese people is legendary, as well as the smells of their food being prepared and sounds of soups being consumed.  One does not leave such an experience empty-handed and we all returned with souvenirs, which adorn our tchotchke/knickknack shelves to this day.

After concluding our visit to Shanghai, the Quartet was flown back to Beijing for one final, bittersweet, reunion with Beijing Central Conservatory faculty and students at the airport, before returning to New York.

Back at home in the United States, our concert management, Joanne Rile Concert Artists, was inundated by requests for lecture/concerts by the Audubon Quartet.

Sadly, the Audubon Quartet never returned to China for more concert tours, but I remain satisfied that we made a difference to the cultural exchange that exists today between our two countries.

As individuals, members of the Audubon Quartet returned on several occasions.  In 2009, Clyde Shaw and Doris Lederer were asked to join Shenandoah Conservatory dean Laurence Kaptain to Beijing and Shanghai to build student recruitment bridges.  The old Beijing Central Conservatory building visited by the AQ in 1981-82 was still standing, but the old Shanghai Conservatory building had given way to high rising buildings.  In Beijing, Doris Lederer recruited twin sister violists.  Sisters Shuo and Zhuo Diao who graduated Shenandoah Conservatory in 2012, are successful performers and teachers today in the United States.

In 2011, Doris Lederer and Shenandoah Conservatory’s current dean Michael Stepniak returned to China to recruit more students.  During this visit, Doris held master classes and coached chamber music at Renmin University and the Beijing’s Central Conservatory.

My next return to China was in 2014, when I visited the American School in Shanghai and worked with high school students studying with my Australian colleague, cellist and conductor Philip Green.  Philip and I met as cello performance students at Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio in the 1970’s.

Our final visit to China was in 2016, when Doris Lederer and I were invited to teach at summer music festivals  in Tsingtao and Xi’an.  When we arrived in Tsingtao,  we were delighted to learn that the original first violinist and a founding member of the Audubon Quartet, Gregory Fulkerson had also been invited to be part of that festival faculty.  Our participation at the Tsingtao festival was one week.   Then Doris and I travelled to a festival in Xi’an, where we were joined by another of our former Audubon Quartet colleagues, Akemi Takayama, who currently teaches violin at Shenandoah Conservatory.

CREDITS: Thanks to Dr. Michael Saffle for the many of the wonderful photographs, taken during this historic journey