His aunt still recalls how the little Lin Zongfan would play the role of the eccentric Buddhist monk Ji Gong. “Wearing Buddhist prayer beads and a hat made of folded newspaper, and holding a piece of bamboo in one hand to represent Ji Gong’s calabash of wine, while waving his sunflower fan with the other, he had everyone in stitches.” It seems his fascination with traditional folk culture manifested itself when he was just a young lad.

Love at first pluck

Born and raised in Houbi, then a rural township of Tainan County, Lin Zongfan would accompany his grandfather to the periodic cattle market when he was a child. Oldsters gathered in the shade of trees playing string instruments, intoning one ballad after another in Taiwanese that spoke to his heart. Then in the third grade the idea of doing the same suddenly appealed, and Lin decided to make an instrument himself. From an elderly neighbor he borrowed a daguangxian, a two-string fiddle played with a bow, and after a few weeks of trial and error, actually handcrafted a kezaixian out of materials he had gathered from the roadside.

Although somewhat out of key, his homemade ke­zai­xian bore a passing resemblance to the real McCoy, and Lin took it and began to learn how to play and sing. He was quick-witted and keen to learn, and the old-timers opened their hearts to pass on various tricks of the trade. At a young age, he was already able to make kezaixian, daguangxian, and sanxian (a plucked three-string lute), and even made his first yueqin (“moon lute”) in junior high.

As time went on, Lin’s fascination with traditional string instruments only deepened. Once he’d completed his obligatory military service, he converted his shed into a yueqin workshop. To make his lutes, he collects wood from old oxcarts and demolished wooden structures. These old materials are well seasoned and their quality is consistent, he says. Just as Euro­peans used their local spruce wood to create violins, it’s perfectly natural for him to make Taiwan lutes from Taiwan timber. 

Handcrafting a lute is costly in both time and labor. An instrument with an asking price in the tens of thousands of New Taiwan dollars inevitably attracts hagglers, but Lin never yields. He seeks out the stories behind the wood he collects: The cypress planted by an old man who had spent his life watching over his ­family’s ­ancestral shrine, that withered after his death, for example. He records the story behind each piece of wood while carefully considering how to use it to make an instru­ment in a way that befits the stories of both the wood itself and the person who planted the tree. Each lute is the fruit of much contemplation, so it is no wonder that a potential customer may have to wait two or three years to obtain a felicitous original.

Lin’s first lute—now retired—is chock-full of memories.

Passing down homegrown tunes

From his days in elementary school through to his high school graduation and departure for military service, for four days weekly Lin joined a group of elderly musicians from Tainan’s Baihe, accompanying folk songs on lutes as they did gigs at various venues. At times as the band performed, women in the neighbor­hood would gather, preparing vegetables for cooking and singing along when it struck their fancy. Afterwards, the locals would offer them fried rice noodles, and some even invited Lin to dine on a chicken they killed for the meal.

When Lin visited again a few years later, he learned that the elders with whom he performed had by then all passed away, and the traditional culture they had sustained was also in decline. The tales they shared and the sensitivity and warmth characteristic of these country folk had nourished Lin, and their ballads were filled with experience honed by real life.

Despite years spent mastering traditional instruments, Lin has never written tunes himself. There were far too many old songs for him to learn them all, and composing his own would be like trying to run before he had learned to walk. 

Each ancient ballad has its own historical roots. For example, take the Hengchun folk song “Sixiangqi” (“Thinking of the Past”). Long ago male settlers from the Chinese mainland arrived on Pingtung’s Hengchun Peninsula to cultivate the land. The soil was not fertile, life was harsh and they were lonely. When the weather turned cold, their yearning for their homeland intensified. In Taiwan they were virtual monks, but if they returned to China they could probably take a pair of wives, so they sang “Sishuangji” (“Dreaming of Two Consorts”). Although the lyrics urged men not to take a concubine, since the title of the song was not in line with official moral attitudes, some 50 years ago the government insisted on substituting one that referred to feelings of “nostalgia.” 

In Lin’s opinion, to master folk singing you must put down your roots in a place and experience the local life in its nitty-gritty detail before your interpretation will capture a tune’s authentic spirit.    

Built-in passion: Lin selects fine-quality old wood from which to painstakingly handcraft his instruments.

Fear not death for it is fated

In addition to local ballads, Lin also learned to perform for the dead (Qianwang Ge). Since he played the three-stringed sanxian, while in senior high school he was invited to serve as musical accompanist for Qianwang Ge performances at funeral rites. When young he lived near a cemetery and it was not uncommon for funeral processions to pass by. He saw his grandmother lead the village women to the grieving family’s home, lay out their mats, seat themselves and help sew mourning garments of coarse hempen cloth.

To him, traditional Daoist rites are not superstition, but rather a symbol of community cohesion. For this reason, Qianwang Ge—rarely encountered by the general public—is full of grassroots vitality in Lin’s eyes.

He gradually learned about the roles of the musician, Daoist priest and other perfomers, and the more he learned the more he discovered their deep cultural connotations. For example, in Qianwang Ge one hears: “The third case of grand wealth and rank was Lord Shichong, / A hoarder of gold and jade who sported an illustrious family tradition. / But the God of Death does not pocket another’s treasure, / And with a single brushstroke struck him off the Ledger of Life and Death, / Condemning him to nullity.”

These lyrics appear to encourage the deceased to abandon their attachment to the mortal world, but they are actually intended to make the listener consider that no matter how much wealth is acquired during life, it cannot accompany you after death. As life’s conclusion nears, how should one best grasp what is left of it, and prepare to leave it behind? 

Rich in the philosophy of life, the texts of Qianwang Ge contain stories of exhortation to goodness and filial piety. They are superb material for teaching how to come to terms with death.

Having participated in countless Qianwang Ge performances—including those for his paternal grand­parents—death has taught Lin to seize the moment.

He has held classes at National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, and recruited a group of youths to form the Fleeting Life Qianwang Ge Troupe. Via hands-on teaching, he instructs students about the related costumes, props, dance postures, lyrics, musical accompaniment and so forth. He hopes to help more people understand the beauty of traditional Taiwanese culture.

Made-in-Taiwan lute museum: Each instrument hanging in the Lin family’s living room is a crystallization of the master luthier’s life.

Renaissance of regional arts

Although some people are paying more attention to preserving cultural legacy, when it comes to materials for teaching about Taiwanese local culture it’s still the same tired references to four old ballads with lyrics in Hokkien dating from Japanese colonial rule in the 1930s: “Four Seasons in Fuchsia,” “Melancholic Moonlight,” “Awaiting the Spring Breeze,” and “Petals Drop Under the Rain.” So the tunes taught to students are really quite limited.

There are more traditional tunes in Taiwan than that, but songs once heard everywhere in local communities are getting farther and farther away from people’s lives as older generations fade away. There are many ethnic groups in Taiwan, Lin points out, and each has its own music, which is rare in the world. “We should be more attentive to unearthing them at the local level,” he says with concern. “Once gone, these treasures cannot be recovered.”

Lin Zongfan, who has handcrafted and sold hundreds of yueqin, plans to hold an event celebrating the “Homecoming of the Moon Lute” during this year’s Mid-­Autumn Festival. The venue will be his front courtyard. He intends to invite Chen Qingsong, who is well versed in Hengchun folk songs, and Luo Shizhe, who excels at chanting lyrics, and there will also be perform­ances of traditional Taiwanese operatic performing arts such as Qianwang Ge and Chegu Zhen, a temple parade formation combining folk music, dance and drama, in order to showcase the beauty of these traditional arts and their cultural connotations. It promises to be a dynamic spectacle. Attempting to raise the status of folk arts has been a constant task for Lin.

At dusk, Lin Zongfan sits under a tree strumming “Mengjiayu,” a Taiwanese Opera tune, on a moon lute. Even without the lyrics, the tune and the warm, full-­bodied sound of the lute are deeply poignant. This song is often played at funerals, and each time the troupe’s emotional aunties cannot help but shed tears. As we walk home on a path between fields, Lin begins singing “Mengjiayu,” and as the sun sets we hear the beautiful sound and see a glimmer of hope that Taiwan’s local culture may be passed on to the next generation.      

Lin makes each instrument with the spirit of a professional, constantly striving to surpass earlier works.

Lin Zongfan has recruited young people to form a Qianwang Ge performance troupe, in order to uphold this part of Taiwan’s cultural heritage. (courtesy of Wu Bihui)

Lin visits Hengchun whenever he can to learn from his musical mentor Chen Qingsong (left). Lin believes that the only way to capture the spirit of folk ballads is to immerse oneself in local life.

Lin has made it his mission to highlight the value and beauty of traditional folk music and dance.