The Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra entourage performed a good deed for a local musician during its recent China tour when it picked up a handmade erhu for Mt. Lebanon resident Mimi Jong and brought it to its new home in Pittsburgh.

The erhu (pronounced "AHR- hoo") is a traditional Chinese violin that is played on the knee. It has only two strings, A and D, that float above the neck, played by a bow positioned between them. The player's fingers have no grounding mechanism; therefore, the music has a poignant quality because the artist often slides into the notes of a melody, caressing them in a way that has stood the test of time.

Among the players in the international game of delivering Jong's erhu included Youth Symphony executive director Craig Johnson, longtime Youth Symphony parent Rachel Tabachnik and her husband, Richie, and Master Lu (pronounced "Lee-OO"), one of China's most prominent makers.

Jong, president of the group HarmoniZing, which nurtures cross-cultural understanding through the arts, had ordered an erhu from Lu a year ago. This instrument only made it as far as San Francisco, where the erhu was apparently stolen in transit.

Jong was subsequently afraid to have a new erhu shipped to Pittsburgh and was considering traveling to China herself to ensure that the erhu would make it to Pittsburgh.

Enter the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra's tour to China, June 16-30, which began in Beijing, home of Lu's studio. Jong sent an e-mail to me, requesting that I carry the erhu back for her.

I talked with Johnson, who suggested that any problems with the erhu's size or papers might hold up the whole group of 138 during baggage checks for a night train to Shanghai and customs checks in Shenzhen, Hong Kong (where we subsequently did have problems) and the United States.

Enter Jong's white knight, Richie Tabachnik. A businessman who travels often to Europe and Africa, he joined the tour for Beijing. He would be able to carry the erhu on his back "like a baby," as Jong put it, with the more forgiving luggage policies in business class.

Upon our arrival in Beijing, we scheduled an appointment with Lu; our tour escort, Xiao Quing (her first name is pronounced "Ching"), would provide the translation.

On our third day, Lu picked us up at the Tiantan Hotel in a black Audi. Lu appeared to be in his 40s, with a sturdy physique, wearing a white Ralph Lauren polo shirt and black shorts. He was clearly a chain smoker.

We sped through the city to South Beijing, then drove through a dusty neighborhood, where the residents gathered in the street on this hot and humid day, playing cards and sitting on the front stoop -- a real slice of Chinese city life. Lu's green-painted studio was at the end of a crowded street in a warehouse area.

Inside there were four apprentices (he had two more out on break) diligently working on various instruments. Lu explained that he chose this occupation because he liked the erhu, which is "the most famous voice in China." Lu picked up the instrument in 1983 and can still play it, but now he leaves that pretty much to others.

There is no secret to making a beautiful erhu, he said. It's all in the choice of wood. (Later he pointed out a stack of wood made of table legs, bed frames and planks from furniture, some of it 700 years old, that he had found both nearby and as far away as India.)

Lu carefully matches the grains of wood in the pieces, then puts it together, usually in a hexagonal, but sometimes octagonal, shape that provides the shell that produces the sound.

The rest is gravy. He chooses matching wood for the neck, which may have carved pegs made of bone, and the head of a dragon carved on top. One important step remains: One of Lu's apprentices soaks a piece of snake skin in water for three hours and then attaches it to the shell with bamboo and twine. When the bow and strings are added, the instrument is complete. The process takes at least 15 days.

Each erhu has an individual personality, he noted. A university music student, Chen Fei, demonstrated each of four recently built erhus in Lu's adjacent bright, white showroom. She played a simple song on the first one, then a lyrical work on the most expensive instrument. A louder, brighter erhu produced a galloping song about a horse race. The final one had a lower sound, pulsating and rhapsodic.

Lu put Jong's erhu, already securely packed, in Tabachnik's hands and drove us back to the hotel. A few days later Tabachnik was on his way to Pittsburgh, and we received word in Beijing that he had arrived and that Jong had received her instrument.

But the journey was not quite over. Jong wasted no time in inviting a group of friends, including the Tabachnik family, with daughter Laura, to a ceremony at the Zen Center of Pittsburgh, located on six wooded and isolated acres in the hills above Sewickley.

There the erhu was "Buddhaptized" and "naturalized" by the Rev. Kyoki Roberts.

Jong named the erhu "Ganzeon," which means "the one who feels the voice of the universe."

After the ceremony and a light brunch, and with a nurturing group of instrumentalists at hand, Jong and Ganzeon opened their first free-form session together with a traditional Chinese tune. Then they took off on a warm, intoxicating blend of bluegrass, folk and pop music, creating a dialogue and bonding with guitars, percussion, violins, a viola, flute and bagpipes.

Ganzeon, obviously at home in any music universe, had indeed come home.