Retracing a Musical Legacy in Changzhou, China
This past August, I took my daughter to Changzhou, a city about 1 hour west of Shanghai by high-speed rail, to the old location of the Nanking State Conservatory Junior Program, where my father and uncle studied classical music over 80 years ago. Now part of the Changzhou No. 1 High School compound, the old Junior Program is memorialized by the Nanking State Conservatory Junior Program Memorial Hall. A brainchild of Mr. Sun Chengxun, music teacher of Changzhou No. 1 High School, the opening of this Memorial Hall in January 2026 marked a milestone in the preservation of China’s modern music education history. Yet for me, this history is much more personal.
Walking through the courtyard of what was once the humble campus of the Junior Program, my daughter and I felt the weight of a story that began long before either of us were born. The memorial hall stands on the very ground of the Lingguan Temple, where, in 1946, the Junior Program relocated after its founding in wartime Chongqing. As the exhibits recount, the program was created by the visionary educator and composer Wu Po-tchao, President of the Nanking State Conservatory, who believed that China’s symphonic future depended on training gifted children from the earliest age. In the chaos of war and scarcity, he recruited young students from orphanages and schools, and taught them to “tap chopsticks on bowls to train pitch,” laying the foundation for China’s first systematic childhood music training program.
The hall’s displays trace how this unlikely sanctuary became the cradle of China’s symphonic talent. Under teachers such as Liang Dingjia, Wang Renyi, Huang Yuanli, and the European pedagogue such as Ferdinand Adler, the children received rigorous training that later propelled them into the country’s most important orchestras. Many became pillars of the Central Philharmonic (now the China National Symphony Orchestra), the Shanghai Symphony, and the Guangzhou Symphony. Standing before their photographs—Zhang Kongfan, Sheng Zhongguo, Zhao Weijian, and many others—I found myself imagining my father and uncle among them, practicing in temple halls, dreaming of music in a world still unsettled by war.
The memorial hall’s official opening on January 10, 2026 brought five surviving Junior Program alumni—now all in their nineties—back to their childhood campus. According to the event records, Lin Shen, Li Zhongping, Mao Yukuan, Huang Xiaohe, and Hu Guoyao returned with emotion and clarity, sharing memories of hardship, discipline, and camaraderie. Then reminisced how their foreign teachers commuted weekly – without high-speed rail, from Shanghai to Changzhou, and taught them with such dedication and heart. The hall’s curator, Mr. Sun Chengxun, and Changzhou No. 1 High School leadership emphasized their commitment to preserving this legacy and expanding the collection.
When my daughter and I visited this past summer, the experience was quieter but no less profound. We paused at the handprint wall, the century‑old German violin donated by Lin Shen, and the original Junior Program school badge. Each artifact felt like a bridge—linking past to present, family memory to national history. For my daughter, it was an introduction to a lineage she had only heard about; for me, it was a return to a place where my family’s story intersects with the story of China's classical music itself.
History becomes meaningful when it is lived and passed on. The Nanking State Conservatory Junior Program Memorial Hall does exactly that—honouring a generation who believed in beauty amid turmoil, and reminding us that cultural inheritance is both collective and deeply personal.
Photos taken by Fang Sheng at the Nanking State Conservatory Junior Program Memorial Hall. Courtesy of the Nanking State Conservatory Junior Program Memorial Hall.
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