All the wooden pieces Wang Hao stores for his violins and violas he has made. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com]

A friend's suggestion that he should try making violins while he was still in Italy, the hub of worldwide violin making, rekindled his spirits.

So, in 2011 he decided to transfer from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, a renowned Italian school, to the famous Cremona International Violin Making School.

"I needed to start from scratch," Wang said. "It was really hard for me because in addition to a good deal of basic theoretical knowledge, I needed to polish my Italian in a short time to communicate with my teachers, who did not speak English."

"Luckily, this allowed me to learn the most original European ideas compared with my Chinese counterparts who had studied musical instrument making in China."

His mentor, Massimo Negroni, a renowned Italian violin maker and famous in European violin making circles, offered the Chinese student all his advanced ideas.