Ben Lee (李俊逸) was never any good at playing music. Though he took piano, flute, violin and guitar lessons as a child, he gave up due to the rigorous demands of the training.
“It was my parent’s idea to learn all these instruments, not mine,” the 33-year-old gynecologist said, recalling how frustrated he felt by his lack of progress, even after spending hours practicing.
But having recently proposed to a musician, Lee changed his tune and began learning the ukulele.
Photo Courtesy of Lee Shuenn-ji
“I’d heard how easy it is to learn the ukulele and, most importantly, I wanted to impress [my fiancee] at our wedding,” Lee said while strumming a few bars of Ukulele, a song released by Taiwanese pop icon Jay Chou (周杰倫).
“The experience was amazing. I learned how to play the full song in just one lesson,” he said. He added: “The best part is, you can’t tell that I’m an amateur.”
Dubbed the world’s easiest musical instrument to learn, the ukulele is a miniature guitar that originated in Hawaii in the 19th century. It became fabulously popular in Taiwan two years ago after it appeared in In Time with You (我可能不會愛上你), a top-rated drama about a boy who is incapable of confessing his love for a high school classmate. Instead, he pours all his passion into playing the ukulele.
Because of the success of In Time with You, the ukulele became an overnight sensation. Cram schools started offering lessons and stores began replacing violins with ukuleles. Men like Lee are also finding that serenading their significant other with a ukulele is an ideal (and cheaper) alternative to a bouquet of flowers.
“People from all walks of life come to us for lessons, more than we first imagined when we opened the specialty store three years ago,” said Shao Jian-ming (邵建銘), owner of GoodieMusic in Taipei.
Shao said his music business started with only 10 students. Today, however, his school has 10 times that amount, with students ranging from four to 80 years old. While most come for fun, Shao said, others think that learning the ukulele can help build self-confidence.
“The ukulele is great for beginners because the frustration level is low. It only has four strings so you don’t have to know a lot about music to play well,” he said.
Although the romance drama did much to spark the craze, Shao said that the ukulele itself has many features unrivaled by other instruments because its light, portable and simple to learn. And with a basic model costing around NT$1,000, it’s also easy on the pocketbook.
Noting that schools at different grade levels are placing the ukulele on their curriculum, Shao forecasts that the ukulele, like cycling, will become part of people’s everyday life.
As the number of players continues to grow, the musical instrument is bringing along new business opportunities. Ukulele manufacturers from home and abroad have been getting large orders from Taiwanese retailers. Chen Kuo-ming (陳國明), one of the nation’s few experts on handmade guitars, said he has made a lot more ukuleles last year than in previous years.
Seeing the market niche, some enthusiasts from Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區) have even quit their jobs to start their own ukulele business.
“The [ukulele] trend really began in Hsinchu, a place full of engineers but without much entertainment… Playing the ukulele soon became a favorite pastime,” said Amanda Yao (姚巧玲), who left Hsinchu this year to teach the ukulele in Taipei. She added that the ukulele has become the center of life for many locals, with performances and events being held every other week.
Some of Taiwan’s top companies are even getting on board, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (台積電), United Microelectronics Corporation (聯電) and Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工業技術研究院) encouraging ukulele playing amongst their staff.
“Employees not only perform at year-end parties, they also do charity shows for orphanages, retirement homes and students living in remote areas,” said Lee Shuenn-ji (李順吉), a senior wireless communications engineer at ITRI.
For Lee Shuenn-ji, teaching the ukulele has become one of his passions because he is able to bring a smile to people’s faces. Last year, he and his fellow ukulele aficionados gave three month’s free private lessons to 50 disadvantaged elementary school students that enabled them to stand out in a public ensemble performance.
“Many enthusiasts are devoting themselves to long-term ukulele promotion, and, without a doubt, the trend will continue,” he said.
A recent report from the Environmental Management Administration of the Ministry of Environment highlights a perennial problem: illegal dumping of construction waste. In Taoyuan’s Yangmei District (楊梅) and Hsinchu’s Longtan District (龍潭) criminals leased 10,000 square meters of farmland, saying they were going to engage in horticulture. They then accepted between 40,000 and 50,000 cubic meters of construction waste from sites in northern Taiwan, charging less than the going rate for disposal, and dumped the waste concrete, tile, metal and glass onto the leased land. Taoyuan District prosecutors charged 33 individuals from seven companies with numerous violations of the law. This
As mega K-pop group BTS returns to the stage after a hiatus of more than three years, one major market is conspicuously missing from its 12-month world tour: China. The omission of one of the group’s biggest fan bases comes as no surprise. In fact, just the opposite would have been huge news. China has blocked most South Korean entertainment since 2016 under an unofficial ban that also restricts movies and the country’s popular TV dramas. For some Chinese, that means flying to Seoul to see their favorite groups perform — as many were expected to do for three shows opening
What is the importance within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of the meeting between Xi Jinping (習近平), the leader Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), the leader of the KMT? Local media is an excellent guide to determine how important — or unimportant — a news event is to the public. Taiwan has a vast online media ecosystem, and if a news item is gaining traction among readers, editors shift resources in near real time to boost coverage to meet the demand and drive up traffic. Cheng’s China trip is among the top headlines, but by no means
Apr. 13 to Apr. 19 From 17th-century royalty and Presbyterian missionaries to White Terror victims, cultural figures and industrialists, Nanshan Public Cemetery (南山公墓) sprawls across 95 hectares, guarding four centuries of Taiwan’s history. Current estimates show more than 60,000 graves, the earliest dating to 1642. Besides individual tombs, there are also hundreds of family plots, one of which is said to contain around 1,000 remains. As the cemetery occupies valuable land in the heart of Tainan, the government in 2018 began asking families to relocate the graves to make way for development. That
RSS