I worked on the sheng very seriously, and was the only westerner in the municipal trad orchestra in the city I was living in. (That actually says more about how desperate they were for sheng players than about how skillful I became.) I was only playing Chinese music in that context, although I did get to the point where I could knock out a good few ITM tunes on the sheng.
The bawu was more of a curiosity for me. It's not much like playing an uilleann pipe chanter, in that the fingering is "open," and there is considerable dynamic range on the bawu. I suppose there are similarities to the Northumbrian smallpipes chanter, in that it plays only in one register. The bulk of the traditional music for the bawu has a fairly small compass, generally not more than a tenth or so, but like the NSP chanter, there are keyed versions which extend the range by adding tone holes above and below the fingered range.