Peng Tao, a Senior 3 student of Bao’an Middle School, has been admitted to the business school of Indiana University Bloomington in the United States for excelling in playing erhu, a two-stringed bowed fiddle. The university, an elite public university in America, generally demands a good performance in the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOFEL) and the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). But Peng is an exception due to the proficiency of his erhu playing. “I only got 85 points in my TOFEL and 1,770 in SAT, not good enough to be recruited by the university. The school made an exception by picking me, especially due to the fact that the business school only chooses their students among freshmen based on their first year academic performance,” Peng said. He admitted that his skills in playing erhu had been a major factor in his recruitment. Peng achieved the top grade in erhu playing when he was in junior middle school. He won first prize in a national erhu competition in 2009. He also gave a number of charity performances in his hometown before he moved to Shenzhen with his parents. “I myself was surprised when I heard I had been recruited. My teacher told me when I submitted my application that a senior schoolmate failed even with a score much higher than mine,” Peng said. Peng said he learned to play erhu when he was six, following his parents’ wishes. “In the beginning I played it to make my parents happy. But later I found peace in it and saw it as a means of easing study pressure,” Peng said. He said he used to just follow the notes in his mind but now he plays it with vivid emotions. “It seems that I used to play in straight lines but now in curves, fine-tuning my music through refined strength on my fiddles.” Peng’s parents wished he would spend more time in academic study after he entered Senior 2 but Peng’s interest in the instrument has kept him practicing unrelentingly. Peng said he hoped to introduce erhu to more American people after he enters the college. (Zhao Jie) | 