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Summary They play anything from Chinese classical music to western folk songs on instruments by vegetables.
Vendors at the local market in Beijing could be forgiven for thinking Nan Weidong and Nan Weiping run a restaurant.But the bags stuffed with all manner of vegetables that the brothers lug back home are used for a very different purpose -- to make musical instruments.Forty-three-year-old Nan Weidong and 41-year-old Nan Weiping grew up surrounded by vegetables on a farm in Chinas central Anhui province.Their music teacher father encouraged them to learn conventional instruments from a young age, and as teenagers they joined a local theatrical troupe. The idea of playing music with vegetables came to them only two years ago, but has fascinated them ever since.They now live and work in a narrow apartment in Beijing, drilling holes in carrots, marrows, lotus roots and Chinese yams and testing their pitch on an old electronic tuner -- nibbling silently on the shavings all the while.Big brother Nan Weidong said it was very important to select vegetables of the right size and shape, but above all, they must be fresh.If the water content in vegetables evaporates, the tune will become higher than the basic tune or out of tune. Therefore we choose the vegetables with as much water content as possible. The vegetables have to be solid and hard. We cant use those vegetables left over for days. They are too soft to be played, he said.According to the brothers, different vegetables have different scales and are therefore suited to different melodies.No vegetable goes untested: a sweet potato becomes an ocarina, a bamboo shoot becomes a flute, a yam, a whistle.Their repertoire is equally diverse. They play anything from traditional Chinese flute music to modern pop to western folk songs like Auld Lang Syne.
