Letter: Photos from China

by William Garofalo

Originally published in American Lutherie #101, 2010



Dear Tim —

I just came back from two months in China. I went there to get my teeth fixed; an excellent quality four-tooth bridge was $600. I was also interested in seeing a violin factory that I had seen on Chinese television here in the USA. My wife is Chinese and we have three antennas that bring in many Chinese stations.

Well, I got my teeth and then Charley, a friend of my wife, drove us out into the country to the violin factory. They make a lot of the cheaper violins that are sold in the world. It was a huge brick building with room after room filled with violins, violas, cellos, and bass viols. It was Sunday, and only one man was working. He had about twenty violins on a shelf, and he was putting the soundposts in them. I bought a special tool to set soundposts years ago, but after many hours of trying, I gave up. This man was setting the posts in about two minutes each.