Dan Wang

“If only that Qing cartographer could see Guizhou now. All sorts of new infrastructure are built into its countryside. On the third day, we came upon a sight nearly as strange as a monkey-filled phantasm. Teng was leading the three of us when he yelled, “Guitars!” When I raised my gaze, I saw that big guitar ornaments were hanging off of streetlamps. In the distance, I spied a hill topped by a giant rock guitar. It turned out that we were cycling through Zheng’an County, the self-styled guitar capital of the world. According to state media, one of every seven guitars made worldwide is produced in this township we passed through by chance. That is another feature of the engineering state: Manufacturing hubs are everywhere, often making goods you don’t expect. Guizhou locals may be as surprised as anyone to host the world’s guitar capital. Not many of them play the instrument. Zheng’an became a guitar hub because a lot of its residents had moved to coastal Guangdong for work, many of them finding employment by coincidence in guitar factories. Then the local government made a big effort to entice them to return to Guizhou as part of a policy to develop the interior. That effort coincided with a 2012 directive from the State Council (the executive agency of the central government) that encouraged manufacturers to relocate from coastal provinces to inland ones. The document had suggested that Guizhou pursue technologically intensive industries like aerospace or electric vehicle manufacturing. Instead, what Guizhou built was more suitable to its less-skilled realities: the Guitar Culture Industrial Park. Zheng’an isn’t making the best guitars in the world. For the most part, it’s serving the lower half of the market. But its manufacturers are improving as local brands are getting hungry for global recognition. One of them is experimenting by adding bamboo into its guitars. Many of them are trying to become known for quality, not cheapness. I suspect many of them will get there.”
― Dan Wang, Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future