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Home>Service> Awardees of Fervent Global Love of Lives Award> 12th Fervent Global Love of Lives Award 2009> A Green Musician─Wang Heng-Yi
Self-taught Assembling of Recycled Instruments
Founding the One-Man Band to Perform for Charity across Countries 
       Wang Heng-Yi, the founder of the One-Man Band, collected recyclable resources for his living in his early life. Later he joined the Taipei County Shulin City Government as a member of the city cleaning section, for 18 years. In his late life he ran his own environmental engineering company, which he handed over to his son in 1993. Retired, Heng-Yi had nothing to do; so he tried to assemble a dozen of recycled instrument such as erhu, harmonica, various drums, wooden fish, cymbals, and gongs, without anyone else teaching him. He overcame the difficulties in harmonizing his arms and legs, and could follow the rhythm accurately. Wang Heng-Yi has a lot of potential: he can play the erhu with his hands at the same time as he plays the jazz tomtom and cymbal with his legs. Dozens of instruments hanged on his body were performed in turn, thus making a bustling scene. He is among the earliest licensed “street artist” by Taipei City Government Department of Cultural Affairs. To help disabled children such as Guo Wei-Chi, who lost both his legs and arms due to unknown disease, he was on tour throughout Taiwan . As Chou Da-Guan's posthumous work “I Still Have One Leg” released outside Taiwan , he donated copies to the local children to spread the love from Taiwan . He has traveled to countries like Korea , US, and Thailand , etc, to perform for charity.
 
 
Amazing Self-Taught Skills
      Wang Heng-Yi was born on 14 th of November, 1942. His special performance talent was developed by himself after he retired. In his early life, he collected recyclable resources to sell and worked as a member of the city cleaning team. Later he ran his own environmental engineering company, which he handed over to his son in 1993. He has a lot of free time after retired, and he often went to Linkou Chulin Temple to listen to erhu performance. As a result, he was fascinated with erhu, and thought that it would be good to practice it for entertainment. He repaired, therefore, his first recycled erhu, and practice in Datong Mountain and Qinglongling nearby whenever he was free. After some time, he mastered the skill by himself.
      “I was not except that from an erhu, I would develop the ‘One-Man Band',” said Heng-Yi. His erhu skill improved gradually. A year later, Shulin Chian Min Association asked him to teach erhu, but he had not received any former training, and could not read a music score. So when the association started the Longevity Erhu Lessons, he joined the class as a “teaching assistant” to help the teacher, besides learning to read a music score and the basis of music theory.
      When the lesson completed, some students asked him to teach them to play the tune“Bao-Hai-Teng-Huan”. This tune must be play together with a drum and a cymbal, and, luckily, he happened to find a drum while he collected recycling resource. So he repaired the drum and brought a cymbal, and used them to play with an erhu. Surprisingly, the result was excellent; the students could play very well after a week's practice. This event gave Heng-Yi an idea: if he assembled the percussion instruments and carried them on his back and played them with an erhu, perhaps the result would be good. After more than two months' research, he successfully established the “One-Man-Band”.
 
 
A Well-Received Debut Show; the Urgency of Helping People
      On January 6 of Chinese calendar, 1997, Wang Heng-Yi held his debut show in the Qingshui Zushi Temple in Sansia, he was just trying to cheer the audience and himself, but, as it turns out, the audience loved it, and he even received gifts. From then on, he started his street art career. His performance stages cover every corner in Taiwan . Besides his frequent shows in Ximending and Qingshui Zushi Temple , he is often invited to Yunlin, Hualien, and Taichung , to perform; he even had shows in Kinmen and Lienchiang. Each time he carried his instruments of seven, eight, or even more than ten kilograms by himself, and travel to the destination by plane or train. He had also went to Korea, US, and Thailand, as a member of a Chou Da-Guan Foundation tour for the release of Chou Da-Guan's posthumous work I Still Have One Leg , and donate copies of the work to the local disadvantaged children. These events were highly praised.
      Heng-Yi said that the normal price for performance is NT$6,000 per hour in Taipei , and NT$10,000 per hour in south Taiwan . He accumulated this money to help those who need it. Sometimes his schedule was very full, and he had to rush for the performance from place to place. During his performance, he was often fined and driven away by the police. Therefore, when he heard that Taipei City Government Department of Cultural Affairs was going to license street artist, he applied immediately. Wang Heng-Yi proudly said that, the first group of applicants consisted of forty-four persons, only nine of them passed the examination, and he was one of the nine.
      “Weight” and “stamina” are the harshest challenges of the One-Man Band, especially when his equipments were more than ten kilograms, and he needed to perform for two hours, standing. Although he was still in good condition when he was more than sixty, he could not bear it for a long time; so he started to have the idea to admit students. The first several students were not good enough, some of them could not harmonize their arms and legs, while some other were not good at cadence, or would have a spasm once started to practice. Finally, he met Chen Cheng-Wei, who could play both erhu and piano since he was a child. Cheng-Wei learned from Heng-Yi for more than five years. At the end of 2002, Cheng-Wei could perform alone and finished one's apprenticeship.
 
 
Student Taking Over and Adding New Styles; Keep Spreading the Love from Taiwan
      Chen Cheng-Wei said that his teacher's One-Man Band focuses on the fit between percussion instruments and his erhu, while he likes to add instruments like harmonica and other percussion instruments. His performance list includes folk music, children's song, old songs, rural folk songs, and Kejia rhythms, etc. Among them, rural folk songs are the most popular, and the theme song of the traditional Taiwanese opera “Tie-Shi-Yu-Ling-Long” is the most popular song. He also played popular songs, but since it is difficult to control their cadence, he plays them relatively less. He said that when he played the favorite songs of the audience, some of them even started to dance with the music.
      The retired Wang Hung-Yi and Chen Cheng-Wei, who studied graphic design do not depend their living on street art. Rather, they only try to accumulate money to help others as anonymous person. They are happy about it. Wang Heng-Yi's family once found it losing face for him to perform. However, since Heng-Yi was happy and insisted on it, his family gradually think that he is remarkable: only after a year of self-learning, he became a teaching assistant despite his inability to read a music score; he is now even called a national treasure level street artist. Chen Cheng-Wei already had performance experiences in his childhood with his family. Although he has epitenon cancer as an occupational disease due to his need to bear heavy burden in performance, he still insists to share his music with the public.
      As The One-Man Band has a heritor now, Wang Heng-Yi is most happy about the fact that he can hand over the love from Taiwan to the youth. He said that an old man should pass the chance of performing for charity to the youth, so whenever he has a chance, he will try to give it to his student. Nevertheless, when he feels right, he will still drive his recreational vehicle and plays his instruments for charity, before he goes home to live his cozy life satisfactorily.