This semester I decided to take the plunge and do something I’ve been wanting to do since freshman year but was always too nervous for—joining the Chinese music ensemble. A pianist of 6 years, I’ve always loved music. And in particular I was really drawn to one instrument in particular—the Erhu. It’s a 2 stringed bowed fiddle and an incredibly technically challenging instrument to learn on account of the complicated bowing techniques and the fact the stem has no frets which makes intonation a lot more difficult. Because of these challenges I’ve had reservations about really committing to learning it, but this past summer I got myself an erhu and decided to embark on something new.
Initially I was nervous about joining the ensemble due to fear of feeling out of place or not knowing what’s going on when everyone is speaking Mandarin. But I quickly learned these fears were wholly unfounded. By a strange twist of fate my house manager was also a part of the ensemble, and happened to be in the erhu section just like me! It was an incredibly welcoming, open, and comforting environment, where most people were gathered to indulge in the same interest—music (and challenge themselves to learn something new). It’s immense fun undertaking the challenge of learning a new skill with a cohort. I had only every done solo music as a pianist so being a part of an ensemble was a lovely experience.
I feel I learned a lot about Chinese music and it’s various styles through the class as well. Our ensemble directory Joy is incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about Chinese music and it really showed through the classes! I’m by no means a Chinese language learner but I learned the basics of how the tones worked so I could correctly pronounce the names of the various pieces we were learning, and my background in Japanese even helped me when reading the characters.
All in all, this was an absolutely wonderful experience, I hope to continue learning erhu and, if my schedule allows, be a part of the ensemble again during my senior year!
UPDATE FROM APRIL 2025
UPDATE
It’s interesting, looking back I don’t think I had realized at the time of writing how much this class affected me. I was honestly terrified to try taking something so new and out of my comfort zone, but as I already wrote I had a wonderful time, met a slew of interesting people, and learned a lot about Chinese musical culture.
This experience was my first foray at truly trying something new and being bad at it. It’s obvious that when you first start something you’re not going to excel, but I’ve always had a hard time reckoning with that particular truth. I’ve never liked feeling incompetent or like a fool, and whenever you start learning a new skill it is an inevitability—you will start bad before you get better. This is the class that truly taught me that this fact isn’t necessarily a bad thing at all, and it’s the mindset that helped me overcome my first rough day of study abroad. After a day of embarrassment—airport miscommunications, not being able to read the menu in restaurants, handing the cashier the wrong amount of money because you didn’t understand them—I was at my wits end. Walking along the philosopher’s path in Kyoto I was doubting why I had come at all, I felt out of my depth, and it was all because I felt incompetent. It’s a strange thing, being in a country where you don’t have mastery of the language, can’t use it instinctively to ask directions or inquire about menus like I can in English. It made me feel incompetent, just like how I felt when I started in the Chinese music ensemble for the first time. But I was reminded of my experiences in the ensemble, of how the director told me to embrace feeling like a fool, for that meant there was room for improvement, and what a wonderful thing that was. Instead of wallowing in self-pity for falling short at the race I hadn’t even started yet (it was only my first day) I should embrace feeling incompetent by realizing that it is temporary. For I may feel like a fool now, but will I still by the time I have to leave?
Somewhat predictably, I didn’t. In fact, I loved it so much that leaving was painful. The morning commute, the street signs, the handwritten scrawled menus, they had all become a source of familiar comfort for me. No longer things that made me feel incompetent, but things that reminded me of how much I had grown since walking the philosopher’s path that first day in January. I didn’t know it at the time but this class I took wasn’t just fun, it helped revolutionize the way I thought about progress.
