Musical instrument maker in Guangzhou builds tiny violin

An elderly musical instrument maker in Guangzhou named Chen Lianzhi spent seven years making a 1cm violin. On January 24 2002, Chen was able to make a 3.55cm violin, but the Guinness World Record was 2.2cm. Seven years later, Chen has made a violin that is just 1cm long, and has applied for a Guinness World Record for it.

Learning to make musical instruments at nine years old

Chen is 66 years old, and three previous generations of his family were musical instrument makers. Chen started to work in a musical instrument shop when he was only nine years old and has worked with musical instruments all his life. He is especially good at making violins. He was already able to make a violin that was only 3.55cm long seven years ago, relying on his deft hands. The violin he will soon finish is just 1cm long.

Miniature violin has all the 30-plus parts

From a normal 35.5cm violin to a 3.55cm miniature violin, there are five or six violins of different sizes displaying on Chen's table, beautiful and ingenious, like a series of dolls. "Though they are small, they have all the parts of a violin." Chen happily told the reporter that these miniature violins were called ant violins. A normal violin is made up of over 30 parts, and though these violins have been scaled down, they have all of the parts.

2.2cm was a barrier that was extremely hard for Chen to overcome. Each time he tried, he had to hold a drill with a diameter of just 0.1mm and apply his "hand skills" to a piece of maple wood the size of a nail. Making the curved side panel was the most difficult part of the process. All of his 10-odd unfinished violins broke during this procedure.