The piano didn't arrive in China until the early '20s, and it wasn't until the early '50s that the instrument was absorbed enough into the fabric of Chinese culture that piano competitions were held there. Since the 1980s, having a piano in one's living room has become something of a status symbol in China, much as it once was in the United States, and the instrument has been very widely adopted, not only by kids but by older Chinese who were never able to access a piano when young. China has always found it difficult to ...
Read More
The piano didn't arrive in China until the early '20s, and it wasn't until the early '50s that the instrument was absorbed enough into the fabric of Chinese culture that piano competitions were held there. Since the 1980s, having a piano in one's living room has become something of a status symbol in China, much as it once was in the United States, and the instrument has been very widely adopted, not only by kids but by older Chinese who were never able to access a piano when young. China has always found it difficult to bridge its culture with the rest of the world -- even China's proud heritage of violin music doesn't sound at all like that produced in the West -- but the piano has offered a medium where Chinese artists can meet the outside world halfway. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Chinese virtuosi such as Lang Lang and Yundi Li have claimed top awards at major piano competitions outside of China, a development unheard of in even slightly earlier times.The development of Chinese...
Read Less
