Migrant worker-turned-piano tuner fulfills her dreams in east China's Zhejiang Province

Lin Mingfei tunes a piano. (People’s Daily Online/Fang Pengyimeng)

In 1995, when 23-year-old Lin Mingfei and her husband left their hometown for Luoshe town of Deqing county in east China's Zhejiang Province, the migrant worker who once eked out a living solely through farming had no idea that she would become a piano tuner, play a piano solo someday, and eventually live a better life.

In the early days after coming to the town, Lin from Bijie city in southwest China's Guizhou province worked in a silk mill and earned about 300 yuan (about $46.4) per month despite daily overtime hours.

Yet an opportunity knocked in 2001 when Lin saw a piano for the first time in a piano factory where her husband worked in the town, which is dubbed as the "land of pianos" as it is home to more than 100 piano manufacturing enterprises. She immediately had a thing for the musical instrument and soon decided to join the factory.

At first, her job was to attach over 200 strings of the piano to hitch pins along the cast iron plate and to tuning pins across the front of the piano. As a newbie, she worked hard to learn the technique. Due to her diligence, she was later asked by the factory's management to learn how to tune a piano.

It was not easy for Lin to assume the new role, as she was previously unable to distinguish between different tones. She threw herself into practicing piano tuning for 10 hours every day and later learned the techniques from the factory's technical director, which greatly improved her skills. In 2019, she won first prize in a piano tuning contest organized by Deqing county.

After mastering the skills of piano tuning, Lin showed interest in being able to actually play the piano. She purchased an electric piano and started to learn to play the piano herself according to online lessons and piano learning software. Whenever piano teachers went to the factory to learn how to tune their pianos, Lin always seized the opportunity to ask them how best to improve her piano skills.

After half a year of self-learning, Lin made her stage debut when a member of a visiting delegation to the factory asked if any employee could play the piano. Lin played Mariage d'Amour, her favorite solo piano music piece, and her performance won high praise and warm applause from the guests, who hailed her as a migrant worker-turned "pianist."

The piano has brought dramatic changes to Lin's life. In 2011, she and her husband bought an apartment in Deqing county with their savings from long years of hard work. Lin has been recognized as a highly-skilled piano tuner, and now earns more than 6,000 yuan each month in the piano factory.

"It's never too late to chase your dreams," Lin said, adding that she plans to strive for a professional qualification certificate for piano tuning and hopes to share her piano-related experiences and stories to her friends and relatives in her hometown, so as to encourage them to learn to play the piano as well.