An Yilan County family has been making high-quality gongs for three generations, and is holding onto its tradition of hand-making its pieces.
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00:00No temple celebration or traditional parade would be complete without the crash and boom
00:10of gongs.
00:12And these beautiful bronze creations are a staple of the contemporary stage too, with
00:16percussionists pushing their sonic possibilities to their limits.
00:25Buy a professional-grade gong in Taiwan today, and there's a serious chance you're buying
00:29a piece forged by 71-year-old master craftsman Lin Biejie.
00:35His workshop in the northeast county of Yilan accounts for 80% of national production, a
00:40remarkable feat considering his gongs are completely made by hand.
00:46A single step, like hammering the sides until they curve just right, can take hours.
00:51But this kind of care is what gives the gongs their famed quality.
01:06This family enterprise got an unexpected start in 1947.
01:11A local traditional music troupe had a gong in need of repair.
01:14Lin's father was a skilled iron worker, but had no real idea about how to go about fixing
01:19a musical instrument.
01:21Luckily, the repair was a success, and in the decades that followed, gongs took over
01:26the workshop, making its reputation internationally.
01:52With orders pouring in, the Lin family of five was swamped with work, even continuing
01:57to toil through the weekend.
01:58Though the heyday of demand for handmade gongs may be past, the company is still going strong,
02:05thanks to orders from demanding percussionists who know this is the place to get just the
02:09sound they want.
02:12There are large hanging gongs, carefully hammered to adjust their pitch and tone.
02:23And there are whole sets of smaller gongs, able to play melodies over several octaves.
02:28Each is fine-tuned before being shipped out.
02:31Now, the workshop is in its third generation of family ownership.
02:35Son Lin Haoxian first picked up a hammer to help out in grade six, but he had his heart
02:40set on medical school and a career as a doctor.
02:43One day, however, as he struggled to work on one of his father's gongs, he realized
02:48how much more he still had to learn about the art, and that here in the workshop was
02:52where he really belonged.
03:11Having a son to carry on the business is something that makes the elder Lin happy.
03:16Old age and years of testing gongs at close quarters have left him hard of hearing.
03:21The family hopes to keep the business going through more generations, cementing its place
03:26as a center of traditional culture and refined technique.
03:33John Hsu and John Van Triest for Taiwan Plus.