Music to students鈥 ears: pianos in trucks
Print Edition
When 7-year-old Sophia Cheung hears a truck park outside her home in Hong Kong, she grabs her sheet music and runs out the door.
In the truck, instructor Evan Kam, holding a sanitizer bottle and wearing a face mask, greets her by a piano.
With schools shut since January by the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed four people in Hong Kong, students have been asked to study online.
But that won鈥檛 work very well for piano lessons.
Ming鈥檚 Piano, with 12 teachers and about 200 students, has hired three trucks to deliver lessons at students鈥 doorsteps and save its business.
For students like Sophia, the lessons are also a rare and welcome opportunity to get out of her home.
鈥淚 feel very depressed myself, not to mention my children,鈥 said her mother, Wendy Yeung. 鈥淭hey are always asking: 鈥榃hen can we go out to play? Where can I go? What else can I do?鈥 Now we have an option.鈥
The school lost more than two-thirds of its business after the outbreak. Inspired by mobile blood donation centers, Ming鈥檚 Piano took its business on the road in late February and is back to 70 percent of pre-outbreak levels.
The piano keys get disinfected between lessons and the truck鈥檚 trailer is equipped with an air purifier and lighting, which means the engine has to be running.
As the idling truck rumbled softly beneath her feet, Cheung, in a caterpillar-themed face mask, practiced her favorite song 鈥淟et it Go,鈥 from Disney鈥檚 鈥淔rozen.鈥
Teaching in a truck feels the same as teaching in the studio, Kam said, apart from the challenge of finding washrooms.
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