嚴師慈父·師徒相稱的荒誕A Stern Master, a Loving Father · The Absurdity of a Father and Son Calling Each Other Master and Disciple
China’s Beethoven · Blind Musician AbingA Stern Master, a Loving Father · The Absurdity of a Father and Son Calling Each Other Master and Disciple
China’s Beethoven · Blind Musician Abing嚴師慈父·師徒相稱的荒誕
中國的貝多芬·瞎子阿炳

After the death of Abing’s biological mother, Wu Afen, Hua Qinghe still dared not publicly acknowledge Abing as his own son. He placed the boy in the care of relatives in the countryside. It was not until Abing was eight years old that he brought him back to Leizun Hall, telling the outside world that the child was a “young disciple” he had adopted from the countryside.

Abing grew up in this profoundly distorted environment: everyone knew that he was an “illegitimate child,” yet his real father could acknowledge him only as a disciple. Driven by his own selfishness, his attachment to reputation and status, and the pressures imposed by feudal ethics and the taboos surrounding his Taoist position, Hua Qinghe continued to conceal the true relationship between himself and Abing.

Only in 1918, as he lay dying, did he tearfully reveal to Abing—then around twenty-five years old—the father-and-son bond he had deliberately concealed for more than two decades.

This human tragedy, born of feudal morality, social prejudice, and the constraints of status, became one of the most painful and sensitive experiences of Abing’s life. It left a wound deep within his heart that could never fully heal and shaped the course of his entire life.

The relationship between Hua Yanjun and his father, Hua Qinghe, remains one of the most concealed and contradictory—and at the same time one of the most moving and heartbreaking—legends in the history of Chinese music.

As the Taoist priest in charge of Leizun Hall at Dongxu Temple in Wuxi, Hua Qinghe sought to protect his reputation. Even after bringing eight-year-old Abing back to live with him, he still dared not publicly acknowledge the boy as his son. They could only address each other as “master and disciple,” while the true identity of his own flesh and blood remained hidden.

After the death of Abing’s biological mother, Wu Afen, Hua Qinghe still dared not publicly acknowledge Abing as his own son. He placed the boy in the care of relatives in the countryside. It was not until Abing was eight years old that he brought him back to Leizun Hall, telling the outside world that the child was a “young disciple” he had adopted from the countryside.

Abing grew up in this profoundly distorted environment: everyone knew that he was an “illegitimate child,” yet his real father could acknowledge him only as a disciple. Driven by his own selfishness, his attachment to reputation and status, and the pressures imposed by feudal ethics and the taboos surrounding his Taoist position, Hua Qinghe continued to conceal the true relationship between himself and Abing.

Only in 1918, as he lay dying, did he tearfully reveal to Abing—then around twenty-five years old—the father-and-son bond he had deliberately concealed for more than two decades.

This human tragedy, born of feudal morality, social prejudice, and the constraints of status, became one of the most painful and sensitive experiences of Abing’s life. It left a wound deep within his heart that could never fully heal and shaped the course of his entire life.

The relationship between Hua Yanjun and his father, Hua Qinghe, remains one of the most concealed and contradictory—and at the same time one of the most moving and heartbreaking—legends in the history of Chinese music.

As the Taoist priest in charge of Leizun Hall at Dongxu Temple in Wuxi, Hua Qinghe sought to protect his reputation. Even after bringing eight-year-old Abing back to live with him, he still dared not publicly acknowledge the boy as his son. They could only address each other as “master and disciple,” while the true identity of his own flesh and blood remained hidden.

It was precisely because Abing was an illegitimate son who could never be openly acknowledged—and because his mother, Wu Afen, had died tragically under the persecution of society’s moral conventions—that Hua Qinghe carried an immense burden of guilt and remorse toward his son.

After bringing Abing into his home and assuming responsibility for his upbringing, Hua Qinghe therefore carried the roles of both “loving father” and “stern master” to their furthest extremes. Through a method of education driven by a powerful desire to compensate for the past, yet bordering on cruelty, he forged Abing into a musical genius.

Hua Qinghe knew how difficult Abing’s childhood had been while living under the roof of relatives. Once he brought the boy back to the Taoist temple, he did everything within his power to provide him with the best life and education available under the circumstances.

He did not treat Abing as an ordinary temple boy whose duties were limited to sweeping floors, heating water, and attending to miscellaneous chores. Instead, he began giving him a comprehensive cultural education. He sent Abing to a traditional private school, where he studied the Three Character Classic, the Hundred Family Surnames, the Four Books and Five Classics, and other canonical works of traditional Chinese culture. Hua Qinghe also trained him rigorously in Chinese brush calligraphy.

As a result, Abing not only became accomplished in music but also acquired a substantial grounding in traditional Chinese culture. This gave him the literary and cultural foundation he would later need to compose and perform his own “sung news stories” during his years as a street musician.

Hua Qinghe understood that even a Taoist priest who, like himself, had risen to become the head of Leizun Hall still held little social standing. Lower-ranking Taoist priests and ceremonial musicians were treated with even greater contempt. He did not want his son to repeat his own life.

At first, Hua Qinghe did not want Abing to follow the same path. But when he discovered the boy’s extraordinary talent and almost obsessive passion for string instruments, the flute, and percussion, he finally relented. He decided to pass on to his son, without reservation, the full range of his musical mastery—including the celebrated pipa technique that had earned him the name “Iron-Handed Pipa.”

In teaching music, Hua Qinghe put aside the tenderness of a loving father and assumed the role of a true master. He subjected Hua Yanjun to a punishing discipline—training through the coldest days of winter and the hottest days of summer. At such times, he was an uncompromising master who would tolerate not the slightest trace of laziness or neglect from Abing.

According to accounts passed down in later years, Hua Qinghe devised a series of nearly brutal exercises to strengthen Abing’s fingers and wrists and temper his perseverance. This was more than musical training; it was a trial of the will under extreme conditions.

In winter, he ordered Abing to rub his hands with blocks of ice and then play the freezing strings of the pipa. In summer, when mosquitoes tormented Abing as he practised outdoors and made it difficult for him to concentrate, Hua Qinghe had him immerse his feet in a bucket of water and continue practising the erhu amid the stifling heat and humidity.

When Abing practised the flute, Hua Qinghe made him stand facing the bitter winter winds of Wuxi and play directly into the gale, strengthening the muscles around his lips and developing steadiness of breath. He also suspended a scale weight from the end of the flute to build the strength required to hold the instrument firmly at the wrist.

For a child of around ten, none of this was easy. Whenever Abing felt that he could bear no more and began to lose heart, Hua Qinghe invoked the authority of a master and demanded that he persevere.

Sometimes the young Abing wept continuously as he practised, but Hua Qinghe refused to lower his demands and insisted that he continue. Perhaps, where no one could see him, the father who dared not acknowledge his own son felt as though a blade were cutting through his heart. But in Abing’s presence, he would never permit himself to yield to tenderness.

The profoundly moving power of Abing’s later erhu playing was inseparable from the foundation laid during those childhood years. It is said that the “old strings” he used were thicker than ordinary erhu strings, while his grave and powerful bowing technique required exceptional strength in both fingers and wrists. These were all results of the extraordinarily exacting standards Hua Qinghe had imposed upon him from childhood.

Through years of relentless, high-intensity practice, the teenage Abing had his fingers rubbed raw by the strings countless times, leaving blood upon them. The wounds would scab over, only to split open again. The cycle continued until thick calluses covered every fingertip. Only then did Hua Qinghe finally nod his approval and declare that Abing had at last “crossed the threshold of the erhu.”

Hua Qinghe demanded that his son’s erhu possess tremendous penetrating power. Its voice had to rise above the thunder of gongs and drums during Taoist ceremonies and attain the realm of “a single note piercing the highest heavens.”

Under this dual education—combining the compensating love of a father with the exacting craftsmanship of a stern master—Abing’s musical gifts were developed to their fullest extent.

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Some of these methods may appear almost inhumane when judged by the standards of today. Yet Hua Qinghe unquestionably passed on the entirety of his lifelong musical knowledge to Abing without reservation. Gifted with exceptional intelligence and tempered by years of rigorous training, Abing had already become an outstanding musician in Wuxi’s Taoist musical circles by the age of fifteen or sixteen.

At a large temple fair, the young Abing led a performance of the Pu’an Mantra. His consummate playing astonished the local gentry, worshippers, and fellow musicians in attendance.

By the age of seventeen or eighteen, he had mastered a broad range of musical arts—wind instruments, bowed strings, plucked strings, and singing. Because of his handsome appearance and extraordinary musicianship, the people of Wuxi hailed him as the “Young Celestial Master” of Taoist music.

This childhood training, woven from stern discipline, blood, and tears, left psychological shadows that Abing would never completely escape. Yet it was also Hua Qinghe’s almost merciless determination that shaped the folk-music master who would one day become renowned throughout the world.

During the final years before Hua Qinghe’s death, Abing had already become the second most important figure in the temple after his father. He played an indispensable role in its ceremonies and other activities, bringing Hua Qinghe great comfort and satisfaction.

Yet this concealed bond between father and son also planted the seeds of the tragedy to come.

Throughout his life, Hua Qinghe had faced his son under the identity of a “master,” and he too suffered deeply within. In 1918, he became gravely ill. Only when death was approaching did he finally confess, with tears streaming from his aged eyes, the truth he had concealed from Abing for more than twenty years:

“I am your father.”

The sudden revelation of his identity, followed immediately by his father’s death, dealt an overwhelming emotional blow to Abing, then in the prime of his life. The man who had always treated him with the greatest severity had in fact been his own father. Yet at the very moment when father and son could finally acknowledge each other, his father left him forever.

Having lost both the discipline of his “stern master” and the spiritual pillar of his life, Abing drifted for a time into confusion and self-indulgence. He gradually became consumed by drinking, gambling, visits to brothels, and opium. Later, he contracted a serious illness, while the condition of his eyes steadily deteriorated. Eventually, he lost his sight completely and was forced to make his living as a street musician.

Yet it cannot be denied that Hua Qinghe’s method of education—an extraordinary fusion of profound paternal love, inner guilt, and extreme severity—engraved deep within Abing’s flesh and blood the technique, willpower, and emotional sensitivity required of a great musical master.

Hua Qinghe was never able to live openly as Abing’s father, even for a single day. Yet in the name of a “master,” he left the entirety of his musical life to his son.

Without Hua Qinghe, perhaps there would never have been the Abing the world later came to know. Without this absurd, painful, yet profoundly moving relationship between father and son, perhaps there would never have been the Moon Reflected on the Second Spring that has stirred the hearts of listeners around the world.

(To be continued)