The violins, violas,
cellos, can be found in shops from Berkeley, California, to Des
Moines, Iowa, from New York City to Charlotte, North Carolina.
They're sold under such names as Andreas Eastman, Johannes Köhr,
Andrew Schroetter, and countless others. But no matter how
European-sounding their names, many of these shiny new stringed
instruments on display in stores throughout the United States share
a common origin: China.
Indeed,
thousands of stringed instruments on the U.S. market now hail from a
country far removed geographically and culturally from the European
tradition of string music, and this Asian nation has become a major
lutherie center.
As recently as five years ago, there was little
love for Chinese-made violins among American instrument buyers and
sellers. Since then, however, those instruments have taken the market by
storm—especially at the introductory student level—thanks to a
combination of improvements in quality and low prices made possible by
cheap labor costs.

Yet it's
impossible to say how many workshops and factories in China are making
and manufacturing stringed instruments. "I've been to dozens of them,
and I don't think I've even scratched the surface," reports Stephen
Sheppard, president and owner of Tucson, Arizona-based retailer
Southwest Strings. "It's a big country."