He is a well-known sheng master in the industry, and he is also a sheng craftsman. Most of the Sheng used by dozens of provincial art troupes and troupes in Lu, Henan, Su, Wan, Ji, Tianjin and Shanghai came from him. But he has no academic certificate, no lathe or tools. What fulfilled his achievements was a drawer table and a stump of an elm tree that his wife was dowry. With these rough hands and this "unique skill" in his hands, Zhang Liansheng was the first to build a brick house in the village. One of the three children inherited his skills, and both of them worked in public institutions. He is Zhang Liansheng, a villager in Gangli Village, Dahuangji Town, Mudan District.

For a villager to achieve such achievements, there are decades of hard work behind it. On May 15, I learned from the conversation with him that his skills were learned and realized.

At the age of seventeen, he became attached to "Sheng"

Zhang Liansheng is 71 years old this year. In the early 1960s, Zhang Liansheng's father set up a "trumpet class". In addition to earning production team work points, his father took several neighbors to do ceremonial services for local funerals. When Zhang Liansheng was 13 years old, his father took him to participate. At that time, the service fee was very low, and the host family would ask the chef to cook an extra table after the number of guests was determined, so that the whole table would be given to the leader of the "trumpet class" at the end of the funeral. After returning home, the leader will divide the table among the members equally. Zhang Liansheng is half studying art and half playing. He only wants to make money and not make money, and he will have a round belly. After following three years, he only got a few steamed buns after each performance. As for meat, tobacco, wine, etc., he had no share at all, and his qualifications were too tender.

At that time, the musical instruments of the "trumpet class" were very monotonous, mainly sheng, suona, bamboo flute, bangzi, and gong. Sheng is the most expensive and most vulnerable. Once the Sheng is destroyed, it will cost at least 10 yuan to find a professional master to repair it. If a new Sheng is added, the value will only be enough for several performances. In order to save money, my father used the time at night to repair and debug the out-of-tune and loose sheng. For the severely damaged sheng, my father was powerless. At this time, Zhang Liansheng was always watching.

In 1968, when Zhang Liansheng was 17 years old, his father asked him to take a damaged sheng to repair it dozens of miles away, because he would use this sheng for a funeral the next day. His father arranged for him to take the repaired sheng home today. He had to wait quietly at Master Xiu Sheng's place. During this waiting process, Zhang Liansheng carefully watched the whole process of Sheng's disintegration, the "cause of disease" and the method and steps of repair. Zhang Liansheng didn't think at the time that this was the first step in his lifelong "sheng fate".

Do Sheng to support the family for decades

After he went out to cultivate the sheng, Zhang Liansheng's love and pity for the sheng quickly turned from playing to studying. Of course, he still had to follow the normal activities, because only by participating in the performance could he be rewarded.

During the period, once the sheng and suona of the guys had abnormal phenomena during the activity, he always said "let me see". For symptoms that could not be ruled out at the scene, he took the musical instruments home, disassembled the parts, and observed and debugged one by one. ) did not become one.

At the next performance, he brought the repaired musical instrument to the scene, and he never missed the performance. Zhang Liansheng was very admired by the guys. Zhang Liansheng's technique of cultivating Sheng was passed on to his colleagues by the guys. The counterparts from Caoxian, Dongming, Dingtao, Lankao, Minquan, Jining and other places came one after another.

Zhang Liansheng has been in the "trumpet class" from "having a round belly" to "carrying the sheng chief", that is, ten years of hard work. "Chief Holding Sheng" not only has a high level of performance, but also has a good physique. He is a young and middle-aged man, and he has been a local "famous performer" for 20 years. When the flute blows to the climax, the state of being immersed in one's body is heart-breaking and heart-rending. When he played with the suona ensemble "Qin Xuemei Hanging Filial Piety", "Silver Ring Down the Mountain", and "Hundred Birds Chasing the Phoenix", "Qin Xuemei saw her husband's grief let out a great deal of grief, and cried aloud, Mr. Shang, my short-lived husband. I really hope to get married. Sing along with your husband, whoever knows that you will die before marriage is complete." The crowd onlookers at the scene exclaimed that it was really enjoyable. The original versions of these singing voices came from human tongues, but Zhang Liansheng's chorus and vibrato expressed by Sheng are still fresh in his memory.

For more than 20 years, Zhang Liansheng has become a wealthy local household by blowing, repairing and making sheng to support his family.

Spring and Autumn on the corner of the table

Zhang Liansheng got married in 1970, and he used the drawer table for his wife's dowry as a "workbench" for more than 40 years.

The process of connecting the wooden pipe and the bamboo pipe at the bottom of the Shengmiao is very delicate. There are 14 or 17 holes on the Shengmiao. These holes are interspersed with uneven Shengmiao (bamboo pipes), and the depth of the Shengmiao is 4 cm. It is called "Shandong handle" and "Henan handle" in the industry. This part is the basic area of Sheng pronunciation. As long as the connection between the hole and the bamboo tube is not seamless, the vibrato will not be able to play. This part of the structure is "inverted tower". It is said that the "inverted tower-shaped" wooden products have to be turned by instruments, but Zhang Liansheng never used this method. He made his own razor with broken hacksaw blades. Carve and scrape knife by knife until it reaches the ideal connection state with the hole on the bucket.

Sheng spring is a copper sheet one millimeter thick and one centimeter wide, which determines the sound quality. There are ready-made blanks on the market, but Zhang Liansheng does not use them. He collected the rotten gongs discarded by the guys, dismantled them into the desired size with his own soil method, and then scraped the copper sheet to a certain thickness with a special tool, and this reed blank was completed.

The reed sticking to Shengmiao will not make sound. The middle of the reed should be cut into a "reed". Only the root of the "reed" is connected to the whole, and the rest must be separated. There should be no space at the separation. If a piece of thin document paper can pass through, the gap between the reeds is too large and can only be scrapped. What kind of tools are used to solve this highly precise process? Zhang Liansheng still uses the household goods he makes himself. He cut a section of the seat spring of an old-fashioned bicycle, sharpened it into a razor with three flutes or four flutes, marked the lines, and then used force to scrape the copper sheet like a hollow, so that the groove on the copper sheet was separated from the whole, so that the inside of the "groove" was separated. The part can vibrate, but it is not separated from the whole.

Sheng is mainly composed of two parts, one is Sheng bucket (base) and the other is Sheng Miao (bamboo pipe). Shengdou is the first-class cypress, and Shengmiao is the redbud bamboo on Gulangyu, Huangshan and Bashan.

The frame of the table top of the drawer table is the hardest local acacia wood. It has never "strayed" in more than 50 years, but the corners of the table top have been rubbed off by three inches without knowing it. There are bamboo knots in the bauhinia bamboo tube, and the stump was cut into grooves or holes in different parts by Zhang Liansheng, which has been used as a "lathe" for more than 50 years.

Zhang Liansheng has been making sheng for more than 50 years. From the original 5 pieces per month, the price is 50 yuan, to the current one every month, the price is about 6,000 yuan.

In order to allow customers to find him, 20 years ago, he engraved "Made in Shandong" and his home phone number on Shengdou, and the products are all over the country. He said: "So far away, you can't engrave 'Gang Li Zao'?" As everyone knows, this move was the first in the industry at the time, and 20 years later it became a common term in Shandong Province.