Gulangyu islet retains its foreign-styled architecture from the 19th century. Zhang Jing / China Daily

Musical islet of Gulangyu faces the challenges of development

Walking along the bougainvillea-lined lanes in Gulangyu islet off Xiamen, one can often hear the sound of pianos wafting through the windowpanes around the corner. Sometimes, the concerto fragments of Rachmaninoff and Mozart can even be made out. Gulangyu in Chinese means "a rock that sounds like a drum when it is hit by the ocean's waves". Music is literally in the air on the islet, where one out of five families owns a piano.

Zheng Xiaoying is art director of the Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra. Provided to China Daily

Zheng Xiaoying, art director of the Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra, says it is the "richness in music and romance of the island that have lured me to Gulangyu".

Zheng, a former dean of the conducting department with the Central Conservatory of Music based in Beijing, accepted the invitation from the Xiamen municipal government at the age of 70 and set up the Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra on Gulangyu in 1998.

Gulangyu itself is off Xiamen island in Fujian province and there is a double-decked liner that ferries people between the two areas. The "piano islet" is 1.87 sq km large and houses a population of 20,000.

With clusters of red-roofed brick houses carved out by zigzagging lanes, the bird's eye view of Gulangyu is very much like that of Heidelberg in Germany. The islet is a car-free zone and fire engines and police patrol carts are powered by electricity.

The piano island has been the birthplace of many accomplished Chinese musicians. The list includes Zhou Shu'an, who later studied at Harvard University and became China's first woman conductor.

Xu Feiping, a child prodigy who gave his first performance at the age of 6 at the Trinity Church on Gulangyu, went to study at The Juilliard School in New York City and became the 1983 gold medalist of the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition.

Ying Chengzong played at Carnegie Hall in the New York City Yellow River Concerto, composed by himself.

"The richness of Gulangyu's musical history actually came with the foreign settlement," Zheng says.

After China lost the Second Opium War to the allied Western forces in 1862, Xiamen became a concession. Victors such as Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and the United States came to set up consulates on Gulangyu and made it their settlement.

"It is said that at that time, the island would have national flags of 14 different nations, but not one was a Chinese flag. That was a most humiliating time for Chinese. But on the other hand, the settlers also brought with them pianos, organs, and choirs," Zheng says.

Xu Yiwei, 6, takes her piano lessons during the weekend. A piano lesson costs 150-300 yuan per hour in Xiamen. Provided to China Daily

Most of the islanders at that time were from wealthy and highly educated Chinese families who sent their children to study abroad and they were quick to blend foreign culture into their daily lives.

This is also well illustrated by Gulangyu's countless Western-style buildings.

One famous tourist attraction is the Lin House in the New England style, built by Lin Quancheng, an architect who graduated from MIT in the US in the 1820s.

Zheng, however, moved her orchestra to Xiamen island in 2001.

"Gulangyu has been too commercialized with too many tourists. It is no longer the quiet dream island that I came for."

About 10 million tourists visit Gulangyu every year. New hotels, bank branches, restaurants and shops have opened up one after another, altering the island's alluring view and skyline. In the day, some peddlers along the dock play loud speakers at top volume to attract tourists to their goods such as seashells and coconuts.

Many island dwellers have also chosen to move elsewhere.

Liu Mingxing, who has recently moved to Toronto with her family, says: "Previously, my husband and I would love to stroll along the quiet lanes in the moonlight. This used to be a place where people didn't shut their doors at night. But now it's different.

"Some tourists even talk at the top of their voices at midnight. And we don't feel safe when we hear people talking in a dialect that we don't understand."

Zhou Baoqin, a 70-year-old retired English teacher on the island, says: "It's true that many of us would complain that some tourists throw rubbish anywhere they want to and that they have disrupted the peaceful life we used to have.

"But if I have time and if I like the tourists, I will normally show them around. The island is literally an architectural museum."

Hu Yongyi, a Gulangyu-born musician who studied at the Brussels Royal School of Music, has set up two museums on the islet, one to host about 70 rare and exquisite pianos, and the other to contain about 30 pipe organs.

Among these are a Schramm harpsichord made in Munich in 1906 and a 1853 UK-made piano carved with Chinese paintings.

Hu, 74, currently resides in Australia. He wrote in a note:

"I want to bring back the very best pianos to my hometown.

"Gulangyu is forever my home, wherever I am."