China’s piano fever

Worse was to come. Because he had met President Khrushchev in Moscow, Mr Liu was declared a Soviet spy. His imprisonment was personally ordered by Madame Mao. Arrested on a hot summer’s day, he was taken to Beijing’s Taicheng Prison, wearing nothing but a shirt and thin trousers. For two years he had to live in the same garments, nearly freezing to death during the harsh Chinese winter. Starvation was another threat; all he was fed were cornmeal buns, bowls of brine and rotten vegetables crawling with worms. He ate the worms to keep his protein levels up. For hours every day, Mr Liu was forced to kneel in front of a picture of Chairman Mao and confess to his ‘crimes’. ‘China in that era,’ he tells me, ‘was the craziest, cruellest and most brutal place in the world.’

Liu Shih Kun says he no longer gets much pleasure from playing the piano. Instead he looks to the future, with a group of piano kindergartens he has established in cities across China. Parents vie to get their children a place; they study mathematics and language, there are regular gymnastics classes outside — but the staple is daily piano lessons. Enthusiastic teachers lead four- and five-year-olds who seem hungry to learn. Pictures of Mozart and Beethoven hang on the walls. The only concession to the tender age of these students is the nursery wallpaper, with golden stars and silver moons. Mr Liu admits parents force their children into learning: ‘It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s just the natural Chinese way.’ Is he running his schools in the hope of nurturing more young piano stars like Lang Lang? He shakes his head. ‘I’m doing it because I want to make up for the time I lost.’

Petroc Trelawny’s documentary The Red Piano Factory will be broadcast as part of BBC Radio Three’s Focus on China season on Sunday 15 June.