Understanding Chinese culture and language - whether Mandarin or Cantonese - would be beyond most of us born into the nations of the Western world. All the more remarkable, then, that a young Waterloo man has not only learned to speak fluent Mandarin during his three-year sojourn in China, but also has learned to play several traditional Chinese musical instruments to a standard where he has made a new CD of his accomplishments.

Jeremy Moyer, 26, a graduate of Rockway Mennonite Collegiate and with an honors degree in French from the University of Waterloo, has just released A Discovery of Chinese Folk Tunes, based on melodies which he learned and collected during his time in China and Taiwan.

All of the instruments on the CD are played by Moyer - Coconut Shell Fiddle, Pipa Lute, and a complete range of authentic percussion instruments - and most of the fiddle tunes were learned by rote from Zhang Shi-Dong, a 78-year-old master fiddler.

The ten Chinese folk songs on the disc originate from a variety of stylistic and geographic contexts, ranging from the lively and playful Madly in Love (track 2) - a folk opera piece from South China arranged for fiddle, wood blocks, gongs, and drum - to the more solemn and serene Three Stanzas From Yang-Guan (track 7) - a Tang dynasty ceremonial piece arranged for Pipa Lute, and bowed strings.

The subtlety of the music and the playing requires several listenings before one can adjust to the gentle nature of the sounds, indeed, to the philosophy which breathes life into those sounds. There is a delicacy here which makes our frenetic lifestyles seem almost frivolous, and the CD must be listened to with no distracting background noises, no interrupting telephones, and with no time constraints, for there must be contemplation during and after the listening session.

At first there seems a repetition of sound which, to Western ears, seems almost monotonous, but this gives way to the discernment of the fragile differences in phrase, mood, and style. There is an eerie echo of early French Canadian fiddle music on some tracks - one and 10 in particular - but speculation on common ancestry would be fruitless.

What emerges here is the culmination of an achievement which few of us could even contemplate, let alone accomplish. Moyer is to be congratulated. A Discovery of Chinese Folk Tunes is available at all record stores in the region, and at Wordsworth Books.

To hear this artist: Moyer is playing music from this CD at Mill Race Festival of Traditional Folk Music on August 2, at Bhima's Warung Restaurant on July 31, but most immediately at the K-W Multicultural Festival in Victoria Park on Sunday at 2 p.m.

He'll be joined by flutist Jana Ting, a Winnipeg native who has just graduated from the University of Waterloo.