Piano skills are the keys to success

In one sense, the destination for 9-year-old Pu Huobin, from a town in Ruili city, Southwest China's Yunnan province, on the Myanmar border, was Shanghai.

It was the first major trip for Huobin, who was traveling with his mother to the eastern metropolis in early August.

It involved a 90-minute car ride to the airport in Mangshi city, Dehong Dai and Jingpo autonomous prefecture, for a flight to Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan.

A flight to Shanghai rounded off the daylong adventure.

But this was not any ordinary trip. Shanghai was the destination for destiny. The boy, a member of the Jingpo ethnic group, took the long journey to attend a national piano competition.

Piano players from 34 provincial-level regions of the country gathered in Shanghai for the national finals of the 17th Shanghai International Youth Piano Competition from Saturday to Tuesday. Huobin was one of the 800 amateur and professional piano players who took part in this year's final contest.

He started learning to play the piano, or the electric organ to be more precise, at 5. His parents had planned to let him embark on the path of learning the piano, but the instrument was not available in the rural area, where his family lived, back then.

"Now we live in a town, and take my son to the downtown area of Mangshi city to attend piano lessons once a week. Children learning to play the piano are emerging in our hometown," says Chang Lanxiu, the boy's proud mother.