Hsiangjenho--Bringing the Sound of Taiwan to the World

The Hsiangjenho store, which is right next to the street, is piled high with cylinders that will become drum shells. Amid the sound of the traffic, master drum maker Wang Hsi-kun is diligently using a drumstick to test the quality of a drum's sound. Beads of sweat as large as beans roll off his forehead. The drums that the Wang family makes have an important place in the world of Taiwanese folk arts. To trace the legendary drum arts of these two generations, you've got to start back in the Japanese era amid the bustling temple fairs of Taipei's Hsinchuang, with the beautiful melodies of Taiwanese Opera.

Opera and drums

Wang Ah-tu's original name was Wang Kuei-chih. He was born in 1907 in Hsinchuang, where his father was a private teacher. Wang, however, had no interest in academic learning but a great interest in traditional opera. At the age of ten, his father let him apprentice with a carpenter, but he often went to hang out with local opera troupes. From them he learned how to play the suona (a traditional Chinese reed instrument), and then he started to play in the backstage bands of hand puppet theater groups.

Immersing himself in operatic and theatrical music day after day, it was only natural that Wang should choose to manufacture drums when selecting a career. There were numerous temples in the Sanchung-Hsinchuang-Taishan area of Taipei, and consequently a lot of temple fairs. And drums play an important role both in opera troupes and zhentou folk performance troupes.

The manufacture of drums was entirely done by hand and required three different kinds of workers: carpenters for making the shell, leather workers for making the heads, and metal workers for making the nails and fasteners. Wang himself had excellent carpentry skills and he could make drum shells that were precisely curved without great difficulty. Moreover because he played the suona himself and was extremely musical, he could tune instruments perfectly. Although he had no master from whom to learn his trade, he was mentally agile and taught himself. In 1924 Wang formally set up shop--The Wang Yuanhsing Drum Factory--and began to make drums. Later, he diligently studied drums made by the Taishan master drum maker Tsai Hsin-hu, and gradually built up his reputation in the Hsinchuang area.

Then the Japanese colonial administration in Taiwan began its cultural assimilation movement (1919-1937), placing tight controls on temple fairs and performances by traditional theater groups. These led to a steady decline in demand for drums. In response, Wang worked with two of his hometown friends to research how to improve suonas. "Back then Dad was more known for making suonas than for making drums," explains Wang Hsi-kun.

Stripping off the inner layer of fat.

Leather working

In 1929 Wang Ah-tu established the Hsiangjenho Drum and Suona Factory. After World War II, the temple fairs that would employ performance troupes sprang back to life. In northern Taiwan, various temples, such as the Hsingtien Temple, Wanhua's Lungshan Temple, Mucha's Chihnan Temple, and Chungho's Yuantung Temple, all exclusively bought drums from "Master Ah-tu." Orders even came in from central and southern Taiwan. In order to meet demand, Wang began to take on apprentices.

Because the manufacture of drums requires much knocking and banging, Wang would make them during the day to keep the peace with his neighbors. Yet because the manufacture of suonas requires great precision, and is not particularly noisy work, he would wait for the still of the night, when he could concentrate better.

Born in 1950, Wang Hsi-kun recalls that during his childhood the manufacture of suonas required drilling holes, welding, and stoking a coal fire until the iron was red hot. During summer and winter vacations when Wang Hsi-kun was in elementary school, he would help his father by tending the fire. "My father liked working at quiet times--only then could he get an instrument's pitch and tone right," Wang recalls. "Back then there wasn't much nightlife, and by 9 p.m. all was very quiet. He'd work from then until break of day. At 5 a.m. my father and I would go out to have wheat flour porridge or something else for breakfast."

Making drums, a form of leatherworking, is an honest workingman's trade, and Wang Ah-tu earned an excellent reputation and great respect within the field. But he himself always believed that making drums was a low-status profession. What's more, as Taiwan's economy took off in the 1960s, drum makers one after another switched to more lucrative careers. The profession of drum making became a dying field. Remembering that his own father had been a private teacher, Wang Ah-tu hoped that his children would advance their educations. And so, although his five children grew up in an environment of drum making and were exposed to the craft from a young age, they never actually participated in the drum-making process.

Yet life is hard to predict. In 1973, Wang Ah-tu suddenly died of a coronary thrombosis. His eldest son Wang Hsi-kun did not pass the entrance exam for university and had just started on his military service. Meanwhile, his two younger brothers were still in school. Hsi-kun's mother and maternal uncle, who had learned from Wang Ah-tu and worked with him since childhood, struggled to keep the business going, although many customers left after the elder Wang died.

After leaving the military, Wang Hsi-kun respected his father's wishes by entering the business administration program in the night school of Tamkang University. By day, he kept himself busy in the family shop. When he was at university, his maternal uncle was thinking of using the Hsiangjenho name to open a new shop of his own. So that the business his father had built would not leave the family, Wang Hsi-kun decided to give up a career in industrial management when he was 30 and turned to continuing his father's business. Drum making became his lifetime career.

Master drum maker Wang Hsi-kun (center) selected his profession so as to honor his father, Wang Ah-tu. Living up to his father's reputation, Hsi-kun has helped the beat of Hsiangjenho drums to resound far and wide.

Rawhide

After making his decision, Wang Hsi-kun began to grope his way toward learning the skills of the trade. He still remembers the first time he boiled a water buffalo hide. Because he remembered seeing his father throwing a hide into boiling water, he did the same thing. "The result was that the entire hide got overcooked and lost all of its strength. I had to throw it away." He smiles as he recalls the incident. Then he tried lowering the temperature of the water, only to find that he couldn't shave the hair off the hide. He had to try it several times before he realized how to tightly control the time and the temperature at around 85°C.

The next step is "splitting" the hide. To get the right thickness requires a very sharp knife, and learning how to properly sharpen a knife was Wang Hsi-kun's first lesson: "Controlling your technique and pressure are paramount for grinding and sharpening a knife. Your arms must be steady, your angle consistent, your pressure even." Wang worked at grinding knives for two years before he fully mastered the skill.

Splitting leather is done entirely by hand, and because the blood reeks and stains the hands, it's dirty and tiring. If you just use brute force, the hide might slide around, and it's easy to get bruised by inappropriately applying pressure. For a drumhead, the split leather must be thin and even. Only then will the tone of the drum be true. But the edge of the drumhead, where twine will be attached to pull it taught, must be thicker if it is to be strong enough to withstand the stretching process. Controlling the relative thickness of a drumhead requires abundant experience; only then will a drum maker be able to control things to the greatest advantage.

Only the best materials

Due to these various complications, making a good drumhead requires good materials. Originally, the skins of Taiwanese water buffalo were used. After their numbers declined, some drum crafters switched to Taiwan yellow cattle. But Hsiangjenho, committed to the highest quality, is determined to continue using water buffalo hide. Because water buffalo are mostly used for cultivating rice paddies, their hides are fibrous, tough, thick and pliant. And the older the animal, the tougher the hide. Their hides are well suited for drums that are played often or played hard, such as the "lion drum," which is used for lion dancing, and the "zhen gu," which is used for by temple fair performance troupes.

After stripping a piece of hide that is a good match for the size of the drum, you've got to pull it taut by hand. Then you use nails to temporarily hold it in place before you put it in the sun to dry and take its shape.

Apart from its hide drumhead, the drum's shell is key. As it is the drum's sound box, it's something that can't be of slipshod quality.

In making a shell, the first matter of importance is selecting the lumber. Hsiangjenho mostly uses the native wild machilus, which does not warp or bow during drying, smoking or when stretching the drumhead over it. Wang Ah-tu used go to Lotung, Ilan himself to pick out trees to be harvested from Taiping Mountain.

In the 1950s, after a ban on cutting trees in Taiwan's mountain forests, people started to import red wood from Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. "The importers soaked the wood in water to prevent cracking," Wang Hsi-kun points out. "Consequently, the wood has a higher moisture content. To prevent the wood from warping, I had to cut it into boards and air dry them for two years before they can be used."

When making a shell, drum makers used to have to make the curved staves themselves. A shell would take an entire working day. It was very time consuming and labor intensive. Fortunately, with technological advances, today the lumberyard can take care of the cutting and drying as long they get clear instructions. What's more, with 40 days of kiln drying, wood only needs half a year of air-drying. Drum makers no longer have to wait two long years for the wood to cure.

Assembling the drum shell.

Assembling, affixing, stomping

When assembling the shell, a drum maker first applies a two-component glue to the two sides of each stave that will rub up against other staves. Because the glue dries slowly and gives a seamless result, drum makers have time to check from every angle to see how well the staves are fitted together. When all the staves are glued together, a braided iron ring is placed on both ends of the shell to keep the staves in place and help the glue to stick even better. A hammer and a chunk of wood are used to tap the rings.

Then the finished drum shell has to go through a smoking process to dry--both so that it won't go out of shape in the future and also to prevent decay by killing any insect eggs that are too small to be seen.

Next one affixes the head to the shell. In the past, it was very time consuming and physically demanding. After the war, Wang Ah-tu began to use jacks in place of the wooden blocks formerly used to pull the head taut. During this process, drum makers have to work slowly and be very patient, tightening and relaxing the head until its curvature is just right.

During this process, in order to relax and soften the head, drum makers have to stomp the drumhead with their feet to work out its natural stretch. Otherwise, the head would slacken after one or two years and go out of tune.

The stripped hide must be shaped and dried in the sun.

Drumming by numbers

It was tough going when Wang first took over the family business, because his uncle had started his own drum business. While he was still learning the trade, he had to hand out flyers and visit temples himself to get customers. Fortunately, an old apprentice of his father's came back to help, and the business slowly got back on track.

Although Wang was a newcomer to the field, luckily the drum making industry was booming. During the 1980s, gambling on numbers was big throughout Taiwan, and many players asked the gods for the right numbers. Winners would purchase bells, drums, incense burners and so forth to reward the gods. Because Hsiangjenho manufactures all these religious instruments, Wang only slept three hours a night as he was kept so busy running around the island getting orders and making deliveries.

By then Wang had been in the business for several years and could make a drum himself. But he still could neither sharpen a knife properly nor control for the right thickness of the heads. When he fixed the heads, they were either too loose or they were too tight and would split. He felt very frustrated.

"Whenever I became downcast, I would think of Nietzsche's idea that those who suffer have no right to be pessimistic. I would pluck up my spirits and try to solve the problems." In order to keep the shop going and to meet demand, Wang gave his customers warranties entitling them to free exchanges in the future. He learned the business as he went.

In the shop, which is piled with drum shells of all sizes, Wang is tuning a drum with a drumstick with great concentration, and his assistant is adjusting the jacks according to his instructions. "A mature drum maker should not only be able to hear the tone when the drum is struck but also predict what it will sound like in the future. New drums are tighter and their tone is crisper and louder. After about five years, the tone becomes steady and 'pure.' Normally, drums used in temple can last over 60 years."

Boiling buffalo hide.

"The real boss is Buddha"

At the mention of a drum's tone, Wang takes his visitors to the Hsiangjenho Drum Culture Museum. It is next to the studio and was formally opened three years ago. The museum displays precious drums made by three great drum masters of Taiwan: Tsai Hsin-hu, Tsai Kuan-liang and Wang Ah-tu.

Wang lightly raps the drum his father made some 60 years ago for Yungho's Kuangchi Temple. The drum still produces a sonorous tone. When the temple asked him to replace the head for this drum, Wang was overcome by emotion and felt compelled to acquire it. So he made a new drum for the temple in exchange.

Looking at the fruit of his father's labor, Wang recalls how serious his father was about his work. When he was affixing a drumhead to a shell, no one was allowed to touch the head, so that there wouldn't be any scratches. Nor could tools such as hammers come into contact with drumheads.

Whenever a drum commissioned by a temple was finished, his father would perform a "cleansing" ritual. The ceremony involved lighting incense in a small burner and then circling the drum with it. The purpose was to remove uncleanliness and offer prayers for good fortune.

"Father was very respectful towards the gods. Although no one else would see or smell this 'cleansing' procedure, Father had a very pious attitude about his work." He believed that as long as he behaved piously and worked hard, he would be blessed and would turn peril into safety in the face of difficulties and the sound of the drum would be everlasting. Looking at the legendary growth of Hsiangjenho, it seems that everything was long ago arranged by gods.

The drum that Wang Ah-tu made over 60 years ago for the Kuangchi Temple in Yungho, Taipei County, still produces a sonorous tone.

Onwards and upwards

Because most of his drums are bought for religious purposes, Wang has been to every major temple in Taiwan. "Nowadays, almost all the building materials, as well as the wood carvings, stone carvings and bronze incense burners in Taiwanese temples are imported from mainland China," he says sadly. "I'm afraid the only things still made in Taiwan are the drums." The drums' special status both fills him with pride and increases his vigilance. Apart from striving for perfect workmanship, he is also working to make the shells more decorative, so as to give them a higher quality appearance and make inroads into the arts by meeting the demands of theater and performance arts groups.

Afraid that a drum might fall apart, drum makers used to put iron rings around the shell. Now Wang tries to remove the rings, and he uses clear tinted polyurethane to show the natural color and grain of the wood. He even gives some of his drum shells a matt finish so that they have a look of quality and stability. In recent years, to meet demand, he has made drum shells by hollowing out imported rosewood stumps. Wang stresses that the tone made by this kind of shell is almost identical to ones produced with traditional shells.

Going with more youthful and modern looks for the shells, Wang has discarded traditional designs for livelier patterns and colors. He also finds inspiration in books, and combs antique stores for objects to use. In place of the traditional round rings, he employs all manner of exquisitely carved petal-shaped copper rings, double-layered copper rings, Tibetan door rings and so forth.

Wang's effort and persistence in making drums are widely recognized. Among those who insist upon Hsiangjenho drums are famous performance groups, such as the U-Theatre, the Ju Percussion Group, the Ming Hua Yuan Taiwanese Opera Troupe, and the Han Tang Yuefu Music Ensemble. The Fo Guang Shan, Dharma Drum Mountain, Pao-an and Confucian Temples in Taiwan and even temples in Japan, Malaysia, India, Europe, New Zealand, Australia and the US also buy his drums. Honoring the name of his father, Wang Hsi-kun is making drums whose beats can be heard far and wide and thus carry the sound of Taiwan around the world!

The Hsiangjenho Drum Culture Museum officially opened three years ago. Without charging any fee for admission, it provides schools and social groups with education about local culture in the hope that the art of drum making can be passed down to future generations.

When affixing the head, drum makers stomp the drumskin to soften and stretch it.

Wang's effort and persistence in making drums are widely recognized. The U-Theatre performance group insists upon using Hsiangjenho's drums.

They then tune the head while adjusting its curvature.

Using compasses to measure the shell.