TAN SHUZHEN
The Childhood of Tan
“I cannot live without music for any moment. Life without music loses its motivation and joy. Just like air and water, I cannot imagine how life could continue without music.”––Tan ShuZhen
Family portrait in Qingdao, 1913 (Tan ShuZhen at the bottom right)
Tan Family Origins
Professor Tan possessed a book on the genealogy of the Tan family, which can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn period (春秋时期). The Zhou Dynasty entitled a piece of flat land near the Bo Sea (渤海) to the Tan State (where everyone had the last name of Tan). After this state was defeated in a battle, the civilians scattered to Shandong, Hunan, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guangdong, (山东，湖南，四川，云南，广东) and other provinces. According to the genealogical record, Tan Shu-Zhen’s ancestors ended up in Weixian, Shandong (潍县，山东). Tan’s grandfather was a lowly carpenter who died before 1897, when Germany took control of Jiaozhou Bay and Qingdao (胶州湾和青岛) and turned the fishing villages into commercial ports. His sons, inheriting their father’s carpentry business, went to Qingdao seeking survival and found opportunities: As the Germans implemented road and building construction, the carpenters quickly found jobs on construction sites.
Due to Tan’s father’s young age, when he first arrived in Qingdao with his brothers, he did not have the skills of craftsmanship. After marrying Tan’s mother at nineteen, he entered the Central Missionary School and graduated seven years later in 1901. Shortly after graduating, he studied the violin.
Tan Shu-Zhen was born on June 10th, 1907. When he was two years old, the family moved to Shanghai as his father got a job teaching German at a public school. Tan grew up amid the sounds of his father’s violin playing.
Tan’s elementary school hired an American Ph.D., Dr. Hargrove, as the English teacher. He gave Tan the English name Tim, after Tiny Tim from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. When the school put on a play during Christmas, Tan was assigned the role of Tiny Tim, who only had one line: “Oh, what a goose! God bless us everyone.” However, on the day of the play, Tan forgot his only line. He remembered the line later but never got a chance to say it. Tan’s great sense of remorse made him remember this exact line until he got old.
Tan demonstrated a significant interest in music when he was in elementary school, and he got his first instrument, a recorder, when he was nine. The following summer, he saw a blind fortune-teller on the street with the three-stringed instrument (三弦). Deeply fascinated by the instrument, Tan bought one in a smaller size. Upon seeing it, his father was quite mad: “Oh, what is this thing? You look just like the blind fortune-teller. How disgraceful!”
Discovering the Violin
Seeking a Teacher
After finishing middle school, the fifteen-year-old Tan switched to a high school in Beijing. During the other summer, passing by the Grand Hôtel des Wagons-Lits (六国饭店), Tan was deeply enthralled by the live music coming from it. Tan considered the violin to have the most beautiful sound and started to learn the violin under a senior student, Li XuGang (李勖刚), at Yenching University (燕京大学). As a boarding middle school student, Tan could only practice the violin when everyone was out for their designated physical activity time.
After three months, Li taught Tan all he could, and Tan decided to find his next teacher from the Grand Hôtel des Wagons-Lits. The violinist at the hotel, Oroop, accepted the student readily, but his lessons were expensive. As a result, Tan could not study long with Oroop.
After finishing middle school, the fifteen-year-old Tan switched to a high school in Beijing. During the other summer, passing by the Grand Hôtel des Wagons-Lits (六国饭店), Tan was deeply enthralled by the live music coming from it. Tan considered the violin to have the most beautiful sound and started to learn the violin under a senior student, Li XuGang (李勖刚), at Yenching University (燕京大学). As a boarding middle school student, Tan could only practice the violin when everyone was out for their designated physical activity time.
After three months, Li taught Tan all he could, and Tan decided to find his next teacher from the Grand Hôtel des Wagons-Lits. The violinist at the hotel, Oroop, accepted the student readily, but his lessons were expensive. As a result, Tan could not study long with Oroop.
During the summer of 1923, when Tan was sixteen years old, he became inflamed with pleurisy and thus returned to Qingdao to rest. There, he studied with Russian violinist Horosheshi and Austrian violinist Paul Strauss. Returning to high school after a year, Tan was frustrated as he could not find a second violinist in the non-musical setting. Tan then tried to pursue his violin career at Peking University. However, the mediocrity of the instructors made him decide to return to Qingdao. As he was searching for a direction to go, he heard about the music department at Shanghai University Fine Arts College (上海美专) and their Italian violin instructor. Tan’s father approved readily, as his business was also somewhat associated with Shanghai. And so, in the autumn of 1925, Tan arrived in Shanghai with his father.
