Mary can play the
piano.
玛丽会弹钢琴。
Eric is practicing the
piano.
埃里克在练习弹钢琴。
A foldable 88-key electric piano made in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, attracted the interest of a number of Japanese media outlets recently.
Pointing to a piano at the exhibition hall of the company, Ruan said the musical instrument made by Longjoin Hi-tech can play more than 1,000 songs automatically.
Keen on music, Schmidt is adept at playing musical instruments including the guitar, piano and accordion, and tried to compose and write songs since an early age.
US piano maker Steinway & Sons is bullish on long-term growth prospects in China and has earmarked an ambitious expansion plan to achieve the same, according to a top company official.
The piano brand with a history of over 167 years operates franchise stores of various sizes in 80 Chinese cities.
Apart from increasing the piano models at its stores, Steinway will spruce up some of the existing stores by adding practice rooms, Wei said in an interview during the opening of the Steinway Hall in Shanghai.
More Chinese parents are now willing to invest more on their child's first piano, while most of their counterparts bought entry-level pianos for children 20 years ago, according to Wei.
China is the world's largest piano market with roughly 30 million amateur piano learners, according to the Chinese Musicians' Association.
The country also produces the largest number of pianists, and is home to excellent piano educators and conservatories of music, rivaling those in Europe and the US, said Ron Losby, chief executive of Steinway & Sons.
Steinway Hall Shanghai with 500 square meters including a concert hall, piano practice rooms and showrooms will hold concerts and master classes, and provide pianos for practice for roughly 2,000 Steinway artists during their trips to Shanghai for performances, according to the company.
In 2017, Allbirds secured $17.5 million in series B funding led by US-based investor Tiger Global Management, which has invested in a number of Chinese technology companies such as online fresh food platform Meicai and online piano teaching platform VIP Peilian.
Steinway & Sons, the prestigious piano maker, expects its business in China to grow massively in the years to come as the Chinese market accounted for a fifth of its global sales last year, said the company's chief financial officer.
According to the China Art Association, by 2018 there were about 50 million Chinese children learning a musical instrument, and the piano was among the most popular options for parents.
Benjamin Steiner, CFO of the 165-year-old company, said the Chinese piano industry is a huge and rapidly growing business.
"There are 30 million to 40 million children in China taking piano lessons, compared to less than 10 million in the rest of the world," said Steiner.
"So, 60 percent to 80 percent of kids playing the piano are in China.
"400,000 pianos a year were sold in China, compared to 30,000 in the United States, so the Chinese piano industry is enormous," he said.
Growing national wealth is allowing families to invest in music at homeSteinway & Sons, the US-German high-end piano maker, says it has seen sustained double-digit growth in China in recent years, driven by a flux of aspirational, music-loving households.
The firm, whose pianos can easily sell for up to 1 million yuan ($145,000) each, is recognized as one of the most established boutique piano brands in the world, and is known among the Chinese as famed musician Lang Lang's favorite instrument to play on.
"Our clients in China consist of two different types, the institutional ones and individual clients," said Wei Wei, president of Steinway & Sons Asia and Pacific, explaining that institutions tend to be companies, shopping malls or schools, while individual clients are mainly wealthy households who love music or have a child learning the piano.
"During the company's 165th anniversary event, held in Beijing early in November, a mother, who preferred not to be named, said the family recently bought a Steinway piano for her 7-year-old child.
"My husband and I hardly know music, but somehow our child has shown great interest in the piano," she said.
"We didn't mean to raise him as a pianist, but since he loves it, we decided to give him a high-quality piano.
""A Steinway piano is not just a consumption product," said Wei.
Such a large number of budding pianists has made China a key target for growth, for piano makers from both home and abroad.
"China has become the largest piano market in the world," said Tan Chan, board secretary of Pearl River Piano, one of the biggest Chinese piano makers in Guangdong province.
The online platform enables children ages 5 to 16 to practice playing instruments including the piano, violin, accordion as well as the traditional Chinese guqin, a seven-stringed instrument similar to the zither.
Steinway & Sons, the piano unit of Steinway Musical Instruments Inc, was founded in 1853 by German immigrant Henry Engelhard Steinway in a Manhattan loft on Varick Street.
Pearl River hopes overseas exchanges enhance worldwide reputation, salesGuangzhou Pearl River Piano Group Co Ltd, the world's largest piano producer and seller, is banking on growing bilateral cultural exchanges and cooperation between China and the rest of the world to help further expand its market presence.
Yang Weihua, board secretary of Guangzhou Pearl River Piano Group Co Ltd, said Pearl River Piano is planning to participate in a series of international cultural, education and music events and competitions in 2018, in order to help expand exchanges and cooperation with its foreign counterparts and further raise its reputation at home and abroad.
"Such exchanges would certainly help Pearl River Piano increase its overseas sales in the future," he said.
Yang said he believed that Pearl River Piano would be able to tap opportunities in the Belt and Road Initiative-related countries and regions in tandem with China's growing bilateral engagements across the world.
"The Belt and Road Initiative encourages domestic companies to expand their overseas exchanges and such cooperation provides a golden opportunity for Pearl River Piano to go global.
"After the purchase of Germany's largest and most famous piano maker Schimmel last year, Pearl River Piano is now expecting to further expand its cooperation and exchanges with foreign counterparts through a series of culture, education, music events and competitions in 2018.
"Pearl River Piano was set up in 1956 and now holds 90 percent of the shares in Schimmel, which has two piano production facilities in Germany and Poland.
"The purchase is a win-win deal for both Pearl River Piano and Schimmel.
The German firm has expanded its sales in the mainland while Pearl River Piano is using Schimmel's marketing channels to increase global sales," according to Yang.
Li Jianning, vice-chairman and general manager of Pearl River Piano, said he had met Hannes Schimmel-Vogel, general manager of Schimmel, in Guangzhou recently to explore avenues for further cooperation between the two companies.
Pearl River Piano has also promised to help accelerate the construction of Schimmel's facility in Kalisz, Poland.
The Shenzhen Stock Exchange listed company, which produced and sold more than 136,300 pianos last year, earned 1.47 billion yuan ($22.61 million) from its piano sales in 2016.
A girl and her mother experience an artificial intelligence piano produced by Guangzhou Pearl River Piano Group Co Ltd during a recent AI forum held in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.
[Photo by Tan Qingju/China Daily]Guangzhou Pearl River Piano Group Co Ltd, the world's largest piano producer and seller, is banking on growing bilateral cultural exchanges and cooperation between China and the rest of the world to help further expand its market presence.
"The measures, including distributing coupons, will lure me back to shopping malls," said Rui Yang, a piano teacher in Nanjing.
To Zhao's knowledge, it is quite hard to make parenting counseling and tutoring－something intangible where immediate outcomes are hard to see－as attractive as, say, piano lessons that produce discernible results sooner or later.
Guests can enjoy piano recitals in the hall and listen to a handpan show in the underground wine cellar.
China's online education industry has entered a new round of competition, as innovation-minded companies have gained new momentum in sectors such as skills-improvement, logical thinking, piano and painting.
The One Music Group, an online tutoring company, has developed an app-based online platform for piano lessons, where the app can accurately guide students in their ivory-tickling activities.
"After we developed an AI-enabled online piano tutoring app, we hope that it can enable more users to have an enjoyable experience with the help of technology.
"What made this possible is our self-developed piano tone recognition technology, which is also our core competitiveness," he said, adding that the advanced technology will automatically adjust to match different pitches of various family pianos and decrease background noise to a minimum.
Angela, 7, said she loves her Swedish father, Chinese mother, and her online piano tutoring platform.
One of my friends said Angela's mother heaved a huge sigh of relief on finally finding the right kind of app-based online platform for piano lessons.
"The AI-enabled online piano tutoring app aims to make learning the piano an enjoyable experience with the help of technology," Ye said.
"What made this possible is our self-developed piano tone recognition technology, which is also our core competitiveness," he said, adding that the advanced tech will automatically adjust to match different pitches of different family pianos and decrease the background noise to the lowest level.
SAN FRANCISCO -- There are growing opportunities for music and piano sales in the market of China as an increasing number of Chinese are studying music, including learning piano, Steinway & Sons CEO Ron Losby has said.
Losby, CEO of the famous American piano maker, Steinway Musical Instruments (Steinway & Sons), told Xinhua this week that he was deeply impressed by the Chinese culture and Chinese people's love and enthusiasm for music and piano.
"There is Chinese culture, (and with that) Chinese people are very interested in learning piano, almost like sports in the United States," he said.
Losby expressed his optimism about the "growth opportunities" in China as lots of young generation families are having their children study music and learn piano.
"With that vary large market, you know how important music is and it is growing," said Losby, who was on a promotion tour to San Francisco this week with famous Chinese pianist Lang Lang to attend a private event aiming to market the company's limited edition Black Diamond Steinway & Sons piano.
It's a natural fit for Steinway to be there as a cultural leader in music," he said, adding that when people come to Steinway, it's more than just piano but the love of music, culture and education.
Losby said Steinway & Sons eyes not only pianists but also piano education, citing a large number of Chinese piano educators and teachers who work hard to train young music talents at major music conservatories both in China and worldwide.
"It's more than just concertizing pianists, but piano education.
A year later, the top US piano maker rolled out a new Asia-Pacific headquarters in China's Shanghai.
"Actors dressed as soldiers from Grimm's fairy tales will march in and out of the store welcoming customers, kids playing in the huge dance-on floor piano made famous in the Tom Hanks film Big… all of which make for quality experiences," he added.
Benefiting from this momentum, Chinese startups, such as online music tutoring platform VIP Peilian, are helping more users to access one-on-one tuition while playing musical instruments including the piano, violin and guqin, a traditional Chinese stringed instrument.
Like Uber, which links passengers with drivers, VIP Peilian is enabling its 700,000 users to link with piano teachers.
He noted that the market potential could be huge given there are 20 million to 30 million children in China practicing the piano, and that number is growing at 10 percent every year.
For instance, this can include playing games where the characters are running on your furniture, having real-time overlays on musical instruments like a piano so you can learn, and even having the ultimate workstation with multiple virtual screens while still being able to use your real-world keyboard and mouse, HTC said.
Practice was often an ordeal for 9-year-old Wang Lingyi, an aspiring piano student from Qingdao, East China's Shandong province, as no amount of hard work was helping her hit the right notes.
At 6 pm every day she practices for an hour or even more on the piano without fail, making her mother wonder as to how an online tool has made a sea change in her perception and understanding of music.
Lingyi ascribes her newfound interest for the piano to Xiaoyezi AI Piano Tutor, an AI-enabled online piano teaching platform, which uses a virtual cartoon figure to supervise and guide her musical journey.
In China, online music lessons have become the latest trend in the country's burgeoning online education business, especially as COVID-19 has restricted person-to-person piano lessons.
"The market potential is big as many parents are not professionals who can instruct their children and have no idea of whether their children are doing things the right way or not," said Ye Bin, founder and chief executive of The One Music Group, the parent company of Xiaoyezi AI Piano Tutor.
"The artificial intelligence-enabled online piano tutoring app aims to make learning the piano an enjoyable experience with the help of technology," he said.
Founded in 2013, the Beijing-based company started with a smart piano offering artificial intelligence-based guidance for fresh learners.
According to He, another business has also gained popularity during the pandemic, wherein students can take one-on-one piano lessons with teachers online.
"When I was young, I learned piano, dance and calligraphy but I was interested in Peking Opera," she said.