At the foot of Yushan Mountain in Dong'e County, Xi Tongxing sat in front of the booth and focused on the pipa in front of him, polishing, debugging, and concentrating, completely ignoring the surrounding tourists.

Xi Tongxing, a native of Gaoji Town, Dong'e County, is also the sixth-generation inheritor of the family's handmade pipa making skills. His "Venus Handmade Pipa" is well-known in the industry. In front of his booth, there are several lutes of different materials. "According to the material of the back panel, there are rosewood, wenge wood, rosewood, rosewood, etc., and the price ranges from five thousand yuan to tens of thousands of yuan." Xi Tongxing said that the material of the back panel has an impact on the sound, and high-end Pipa is made of red sandalwood, so the price can reach more than 100,000 yuan, followed by various mahogany.

"The pipa evolved from the straight pipa and the quxiang pipa in history, and the playing technique has gradually changed from horizontal hug to vertical hug. "House of Flying Daggers" and "The Overlord's Disarming" are well-known martial arts songs, and "The Resentment of Zhaojun" "Moon's High" and so on are well-known literary songs." As the inheritor of the family's skills, Xi Tongxing knows the origin of the pipa like the back of the hand.

A handful of pipa are carefully placed on the display stand, these are Xi Tongxing's "heart meat". "Now, some wood cutting processes can be done by machinery, but most of the processes still need to be done by hand." Xi Tongxing adheres to the inheritance of family craftsmanship and spends a lot of money on wood selection, product polishing, sound debugging and other processes. energy.

Xi Tongxing said that their pipa production process can be roughly divided into six steps: material selection, processing, assembly, grinding, polishing and overall debugging. In order to ensure the quality, they will select denser wood, old paulownia and old southern bamboo as raw materials, and then process the selected wood, paulownia plank and bamboo into spare components. When assembling, it is necessary to glue the backboard and the paulownia board together, and then glue the prepared "head item", "picture block" and bamboo products to each position of the backboard in turn, and then use sandpaper of different thicknesses to polish by hand. , polished with beeswax to create the finished pipa.

The components are accurate to the millimeter, and the amount of glue used for bonding the wood is accurate to the drop... In order to make the pipa sound perfect, Xi Tongxing needs to be careful in every process. But a finished pipa is not the same as a fine pipa. To make a fine pipa, it takes years of accumulated experience.

"At this time, it is necessary to make an overall debugging, select the ones with poor sound, and find the problem step by step." Xi Tongxing said that from the selection of materials to the "release" of the fine pipa, about 180 processes are required. Next to Xi Tongxing's booth, his daughter plays the pipa she just made. Xi Tongxing listened to the pipa while making the pipa, carefully distinguishing the timbres in it.

On the basis of summarizing the experience of his predecessors, Xi Tongxing continued to improve and innovate the production process, which also made his handmade pipa popular with musicians. "Now all the pipa I make are sold by appointment, and I can sell 50 pieces a year." Xi Tongxing said that his handmade pipa was selected by many music training institutions because of its good sound. A little contribution to the inheritance of symbols.”