China’s piano fever

Petroc Trelawny visits the world’s largest piano factory in the country where under Mao it was dangerous to play the instrument

As my plane makes its final approach into the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, the mountains give way briefly to green paddy fields, and then industry takes over. Beneath are hundreds of vast blue-roofed sheds and smoking red-brick chimney stacks. The landscape is mapped with railway marshalling yards and lorry parks; heavily laden barges crawl along the creeks of the Pearl River. With a massive economy that’s now larger than that of nearby Hong Kong, Guangdong Province deserves its title as the factory of China.

I’ve come here to visit a company that last year made 100,000 pianos — that’s almost one instrument for every minute of the working day. The Pearl River Piano Company management says it’s now the world’s largest. Three thousand staff work eight production lines; it feels more like a car factory than a place making things as delicate and tactile as pianos.