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I went to Mongolia, then China to Follow Horse Tails for Bow Hair

Where bow hair really comes from

In 2004 I followed horse tails from a courtyard in Harbin, by train, to the bow hair workshops of Anping.


Most players never think about the hair on their bow. I didn't either, until I started selling it. In 2004 I went to China partly on business for Emily's Violins, but mostly to finish something I'd started in Mongolia. I wanted to see where the horses came from, how they were treated, and what happened to the hair between the horse and the bow.

Mongolia

In Mongolia I went out with a guide to the farms where the horses were being "retired." I didn't know what I'd find. What I saw were healthy horses, gently cared for, eating well and living long lives before the end. That mattered to me, and it still does.

Harbin

From there I followed the horses back across the border to Harbin, where they were slaughtered and the parts divided up. The tails were left on the bone and washed down with hoses in a cobbled courtyard to get rid of the bone and flesh. The yard was covered in flies, as you can imagine, and the smell would make anyone sick.

Once the tails were clean, they were sorted by length, color, type and thickness, packed into burlap bags with the details written on cardboard tags stapled to the seam, stacked on pallets and loaded onto rail cars.

The train to Anping

I got on the same train as the tails and rode it down to Anping. It took a couple days. This was before China built its highways.

Anping is where nearly all of the world's bow hair goes to be prepared. In the auction house I watched the pallets from the train broken into lots. Buyers went from lot to lot and wrote their bids in Chinese on little cards and scraps of paper. There was no auctioneer up front talking a mile a minute like we have here. It was quiet and orderly.

In the workshop

My supplier, Zhao Zbing, and his team were there to buy what they needed. They loaded the bags onto a little three-wheeled cart and took everything back to their workshop. There the hair was washed in big concrete tubs with a mild water and detergent solution so it wouldn't be damaged, then dried, sorted, drawn, shackled and tied into bundles for market. The market, in this case, was me.

Where it went

From Anping the hair came to me, and from me it went out to the people who put it on bows. One of my biggest customers was Walter Paulus in Germany, who makes frogs and bows. I also sold hair to Horst John, a Brazilian bow company, and to the University of New Hampshire for their bow rehair class.

So the next time you rosin up, think about it for a second. That hank of hair went from a Mongolian farm, through a courtyard in Harbin on a train, to a workshop in Anping, before it ever touched your violin.

A song from the same trip

On that same trip, in a violin factory office, a violinist played me part of The Butterfly Lovers and I played him Ashokan Farewell. That moment became my song The Butterfly Farewell, $1.50 on Bandcamp.

Have you ever wondered where your bow hair came from?

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