One woman's love for her old employer has seen the company strike a chord with customers thanks to a new range of instruments and renewed business vigor. Sun Renbin, Huang Yan and Zhao Hongnan report for Xinhua from Shenyang.

After putting all her savings and bank loans into the purchase of her former employer, a piano manufacturer, Zhang Xiaowen refused to contemplate what would happen if the business failed.

All she thought about was the summer afternoon in 2018, when she walked into the abandoned factory of Baldwin Dongbei Piano Instruments, amid a wilderness of weeds, and felt the tears welling up in her eyes.

"It can't just go like this," she said to herself. "I bet my entire life on Dongbei Piano. Life is short, but don't we live to do something?"

Luckily for the company, Zhang's move seems to have succeeded.

On June 20, 2019, Dongbei Piano Musical Instruments, aka Dongbei Piano, was inaugurated. It produced 3,000 pianos in a 12-month period, despite a six-month suspension of operations as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic last year.

During the first half of this year, the company received orders for more than 300 grand pianos.

"When there are orders, there is hope," said Zhang, who is now the company's chairwoman.