Chinese mandolins???

[Jeff Mando]

....it was quite a sight to see 100-200 Chinese workers digging a ditch for storm water drain...almost as quickly as one good back hoe...!

sounds like a modern version of "John Henry" just waiting to be written!

[Jeff Mando]

Last month my wife and I visited my daughter who has been living and working in Beijing. We had a wonderful visit in Beijing and in various parts of the country. My red Mandolin Cafe hat was obvious and it too traveled well. My daughter has a good taste in music/musicians and in her second ring hutong they get to see folks like Abigail Washburn. Just before we were there, there was the Appalachian Fiddle fest. Yikes. She took me to the musical instrument section of Beijing where there were several hundred? instrument stores. They sold horsehead fiddles, banjos, acoustic Chinese instruments and in one store Eastman mandolins. With my daughter's good Mandarin speaking ability, I had a nice "conversation" with the owners. I sat and played the Eastman F5 (after tuning some old strings) and there were lots of smiles. The owner said he wondered how it was supposed to sound. There were lots of guitars and I had to wonder how many with "borrowed" labels. Lots of name brands. It was fun. Doug in Vermont

Hey Doug, curious how the Eastman F5 was priced, compared to what we pay in the US?

[bones12]

Jeff, I forget which Eastman model I played but the asking (tagged ) price was similar to a discounted US price at various shops. However, My daughter Mollie laughs that the "asking" price bears little resemblance to the haggled price which seems to be greatly reduced. She felt that maybe one half of the asking price; therefore it might be half of the US cost. Shopping for goods there (if you know Mandarin) seems to be a sport. All of the many instrument shops had a range of "domestic" Chinese instruments many of which were being played by the folks in the many shops. Interesting was that all these shops were directly next to one another , in the same shopping region and often with the same inventory. The fiddle shops had a wide variety and range of quality. In the parks at night there were many many musicians playing lots of different styles of music to huge audiences.

One of my favorite "groups" was two fiddle players in the middle of a large circle playing "folk" songs with hundreds singing along. My daughter said the translations were about sadness of a life/lifestyle long past. There were many of singers with tears in their eyes but no mandolins in their hands. Any culture has great instruments that sound wonderful non amplified. Fun stuff. Doug in Vermont

[Ed Goist]

This is a interesting and informative thread.
Willie, thanks for starting it. Thanks also to all the knowledgeable contributors.

[Jeff Mando]

Jeff, I forget which Eastman model I played but the asking (tagged ) price was similar to a discounted US price at various shops. However, My daughter Mollie laughs that the "asking" price bears little resemblance to the haggled price which seems to be greatly reduced. She felt that maybe one half of the asking price; therefore it might be half of the US cost. Shopping for goods there (if you know Mandarin) seems to be a sport. Doug in Vermont

Thanks, Doug, that's very enlightening. Sounds like your daughter could build a side career as a "mandolin negotiator"!

[Willie Poole]

Ed, It did turn out to be interesting, did you notice that I posted it over two years ago and it just came back up?

another interesting thing is near where I live here in Maryland there is a violin shop that is owned and ran by the Chinese and they must have 200 violins hanging around in that store and I have never seen anyone in there buying anything, I stopped in one day to see if they could re hair a fiddle bow and how much it would cost and they said they don`t do repairs, I also asked if they ever deal in mandolins and they just sort of laughed at my question...I took it to mean that the Chinese fiddles are much better made than their mandolins, but that was quite a few years ago and I do know that there are some great mandolins coming out of China now...

Willie

[Desert Rose]

Ive been off the cafe for a while, just saw this thread and thought Id shed some light.

In China when a manufacturing company is formed you must set up either as an export or domestic sales and export. The red tape for domestic sales is unbelievable difficult and more expensive. Generally the only instrument makers doing this are ones with some Chinese roots like Eastman, Recording King Loar etc. Brands like Kentucky, Epiphone are legally not allowed to sell domestic. Hong Kong of course is a different story.

Regarding Chinese issues OF COURSE ALL Chinese homes have domestic running water for crying out loud! And they can afford and HAVE a washing machine without question. What they dont have is DRINKABLE tap water like Mexico etc.

Ive tapered my Chinese trips down from what it used to be, spending as much as eight weeks a year working in Chinese instrument factorys, but Ive got a couple passports FULL of Chinese Visas and stamps. We even owned fifty percent of a music store in Shanghai for a few years. We partnered with the Blue Hand Music store Chain. We sold our interest to them a couple years ago.

Scott