A Chinese ukulele test

This year I again travelled to China for work, this time to Xi'an (on Hungarian maps you will often see the city written as Hszian, but the correct transcription from Chinese characters is Xi'an). This beautiful ancient city is counted among the great capitals of antiquity alongside Rome, Athens and Cairo. Xi'an was the capital of China for a long time. I assume many of you remember the “Silk Road” from history lessons; well, the Silk Road begins in Xi'an. Fortunately, alongside work I also had time to visit local sights, perhaps the best known of which is the Terracotta Army, not without reason called the eighth wonder of the world. Since the army was discovered in 1974, around 2,000 terracotta figures and horses have been excavated, while roughly another 6,000 may still be underground, so Chinese archaeologists will have plenty to do over the coming years and decades.

This year I took the risk of bringing a ukulele with me. I chose a soprano I had ordered from Temu a few months earlier. Why? Because it cost HUF 4,500, so if it had been damaged at the airport—or anywhere else—I would not have lost much, although of course I would still have been sorry for the instrument. It fitted almost completely into my carry-on backpack; only the headstock stuck out. At one point at the airport someone asked what was in the case, but otherwise I was able to take it on board without any problem. I think a concert-size instrument in a soft case would also be fine. Looking at some of the enormous suitcases and packages passengers were allowed to carry on, I suspect even a tenor ukulele might not have caused a problem...

So in China I played a small nameless soprano ukulele—there is no branding on it at all—with a wooden body, yellow top and reddish-brown sides and back whenever I was not working, visiting the terracotta warriors or exploring the city. I mostly had time to play a little in the hotel in the evenings because even after a week I never became accustomed to the six-hour time difference. When it was midnight in China and I really ought to have been asleep, it was only 6 p.m. back home, when I am normally not tired at all.

There was a huge park close to our hotel, and I went there for a walk twice, taking the ukulele with me both times. I decided that if I had taken a ukulele ordered from China back to its country of origin for a visit, I should make a test video there. The park itself was full of interesting things, musical and otherwise. A married couple were both playing trumpets, so I joined them and played chords for a while—we played Scarborough Fair in D minor. Farther along there was a small band with three saxophones, one Chinese flute and an accordion, and with them we played Edelweiss in F major. They did not tell me in advance what they were going to play; they simply started. To my great delight it turned out to be music I knew, and I immediately told them the titles of the songs, but they did not understand what I was talking about. I assume every song has a Chinese title, so the “Western” titles meant nothing to them. Of course that was not the important part: regardless of nationality, everyone spoke the common language of music, which everyone understood . Somewhere between the trumpet players and the saxophone group I eventually found a place in the park where I could record the test video.

As you can probably imagine, you cannot expect too muchfrom an absolutely cheap, unbranded ukulele. Its limited range also makes it less than ideal for me personally: it is fine for chord accompaniment, less so for fingerstyle. On the other hand, it was perfect for travelling with minimal risk, making a test video in China, and playing a little for my colleagues as well. The test video was relatively easy to edit—which is to say it hardly needed editing—because I made few mistakes and somehow got the fairly long recording right on the first take. Watching it back, I did notice that I had failed to mention the limited range, which is why I referred to it at the start of this paragraph. In the long term it can be a disadvantage if you become deeply interested in fingerstyle arrangements. One of my ambitions is to try a “long-neck soprano”: essentially a soprano body fitted with a concert- or tenor-length neck, combining the soprano sound with greater range and the comfort of a larger instrument.

I walked a great deal in Xi'an and quite by accident came across an instrument shop where I was also able to try a “proper”—meaning good-quality—ukulele. Converted to Hungarian currency it cost around HUF 20,000 (obviously it would not cost that little at home). I only shot a few seconds of video in the shop and attached it to the end of the ukulele-test video filmed in the park. Enjoy this two-in-one video, and I am also sharing my travel video and my visit to the Terracotta Army in case anyone is interested in that as well .