Playing chopsticks

Stern's favor paved the way for Xu to study in New York in the early 1980s and later started a successful career as a soloist in the US.

Shanghai-born Xu grew up in a home bursting with music. Her electrical technician father loved to play the violin while her doctor mother enjoyed the piano.

One afternoon 3-year-old Xu held up a toy violin and asked father to teach her how to play it. The father gave the girl a chopstick and said: "Hold up the violin and raise the chopstick as the bow, if you can keep the gesture until I come back home, I will teach you to play the real violin."

"I did what Dad said. When he returned home, he kept his promise and started to teach me. That's how I started," says Xu.

After graduating from high school in 1977, the family planned to send Xu to a conservatory. As the only child, the parents were not willing to see her leave Shanghai, but Xu's violin teacher Li Muzhen advised her to go to Beijing, which offered more opportunities for musicians.

In 1978, the conservatory recruited students for the first time since the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) and had not prepared the dormitory. Some 40 students made their beds on the stage of the concert hall in the first few days. Later, the school turned classrooms into dorms. Four students shared one room without any heating during the winter. The school gave each student 10 yuan spending money a month.

These poor students would later become international stars, including Tan Dun, Guo Wenjing, Ye Xiaogang, Qu Xiaosong, Chen Qigang, Chen Yi, Zhou Long, conductor Hu Yongyan, Shao En and Chen Zuohuang and, of course, Xu.

"In those hard days, we had no TVs, no entertainment, not much teaching materials and no desire to even enjoy life," she says.

"What we could do was to practice playing for eight or 10 hours every day. It seemed that nothing could distract our attention and we competed with each other secretly."

For a time, Xu felt life was too hard, often cried alone and wanted to quit, but not everything was gloomy. She had been the top student and performed for maestros like Stern, Seiji Ozawa and Yehudi Menuhin. Xu's performance impressed Menuhin so much that he offered to sponsor her to study at his music school in Switzerland.

But Xu instead entered the Juilliard School of Music where she studied under Dorothy Delay and Rafael Bronstein. She won first prize at the Manoque International Young Artists Competition in 1981 and later the Waldo Mayo Talent Award and the Artists International Competition.

Memories of her first day in New York are as fresh as yesterday. "On a rainy morning, I stepped down from the Greyhound bus, which just drove out from the tunnel. All of a sudden, I stood among the skyscrapers. 'How high the buildings are!' I thought. I raised my head up high and turned around to see the sky until my neck ached," she recalls.

"I was the spoiled, only daughter in my family, top student in the conservatory and had won a few awards in national competition. But after a 10-hour flight, all this meant nothing. I spoke little English and could afford a basic life on my scholarship."

She rented a room in 86th Street and walked 20 minutes to the school every day. In her free time, she made money by taking care of the house owner's children.

In the 13 years she lived in New York, Xu grew up from a sensitive and curious music student to an independent and sophisticated soloist. In 1984, she made her debut at Carnegie Hall and became the first soloist from the Chinese mainland to give a recital at this prestigious concert venue.

For about a decade, Xu enjoyed touring as a soloist or with world-class orchestras throughout the US and Europe, but another turning point came in 1993. She fell in love.

That spring, Xu was invited to play a concert with the China National Symphony Orchestra, led by 29-year-old conductor Yu Long. There was immediate chemistry between the two young musicians during rehearsals and what happened next was simply "destiny", Xu says smiling.

After only two dates, the couple decided to get married and it all happened after one lunch in Manhattan's Chinatown.

"We walked past City Hall and we saw many people there and someone told us that they were queuing to register for marriage," she says. "Then Yu challenged me, asking whether I dared to marry him. I said 'why not? But dare you?' Thus we entered City Hall to register even with our take-away food still in our hands."

"Everything happened in such a short time that when we called friends and relatives, nobody believed it. But I believe even if we went back in time we would do it all again," she says.

Only a few days later, Yu flew to Berlin while Xu packed for Hong Kong where she was appointed the first violin and the concert-master of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.

"I was in my 30s and had been away from home alone for 15 years, so I wished a somehow steady life, being a wife and mother," Xu says.

She knew Yu's plan was to return to China to form an orchestra and to organize a music festival, so she accepted the job in Hong Kong, which would be a more convenient place for them to see each other.

In 1996, she gave birth to their daughter and four years later, Xu finally returned to Beijing to be a faculty member of the Central Conservatory of Music.

As a mother of a 12-year-old girl and a wife of a tireless husband who directs two orchestras and the world-leading Beijing Music Festival, Xu has to make sacrifices.

Now she puts most effort into teaching students in addition to playing a few concerts every year and also judging some international violin competitions.

"When I was young I enjoyed performing on stage and now I really feel that coaching young people is a more rewarding job," she says. "Whenever I see my students improve or win a competition, I would feel so proud of them and a sense of achievement of myself."

(China Daily 11/04/2008 page19)