Playing the guqin is at the top of four skills required of every man of letters, which also includes playing chess, and creating calligraphy and painting. Confucius is said to have been a guqin composer.

Guqin is also called the seven-stringed qin. The body is a long and narrow sound box made of wood. Generally speaking, it is 130 cm long, 20 cm wide and 5 cm thick. The surface is generally made of paulownia wood or China fir, and has seven strings stretched along it. On the edges are 13 inlaid jade markers. Catalpa wood is used for the base, and there are two holes, one big and one small (called the "phoenix pool" and "dragon pond,",respectively) to emit the sound. The fingering techniques are known as recital, rubbing, plucking, concentration, floating notes and harmonious notes (same measure, five measure and octave). The instrument is rich in tone color, with airy, floating notes, and simple and solid scattered notes.

The guqin may develop cracks over the years, but performers think this makes it more elegant and capable of producing better music.(More )

Sound of Nature

For many Chinese the melodies of dizi, or the transversely-played bamboo flute, call to mind a picture of a country cowherd riding a bull in the spring breeze. On the other hand, the melodies of xiao, or the vertically-played bamboo flute, remind people of a lonely moon hanging in the sky dotted with few stars in a frosty autumn night.

Dizi and Xiao originated from bone flutes 8,000 to 9,000 years old excavated in Henan Province. Before the Han Dynasty (206 B. C. -220 A. D.), the bamboo flutes were played vertically. The single reed instruments were categorized as dizi, while xiao referred to a set of flutes of various lengths tied together.

After a royal mission led by Zhang Qian opened a trading route with Central Asia, transverse flutes were introduced to China. Since the Tang Dynasty, the vertically-played flutes were called xiao, and the transversely-played instruments were called dizi. (More )

Other Instruments

It is recorded that more than 3,000 years ago, the ancient Chinese boasted some 70 types of musical instruments. The royal family and aristocrats had their own band. For them music was also a way to flaunt their power and stateliness. But as music was never confined to the upper class, or any border, the musical trend gradually turned from solemnity to entertaining. The huge, unportable, and complex instruments like the bronze chimes gave away to more lively and easily-played wind and reed instruments.

The Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.), one of the strongest empires, was a golden age for musical development with some 300 types of instruments. Many of the Tang emperors were musicians themselves. With cultural exchanges over the centuries, a number of exotic instruments were introduced, altered and finally adopted into the family of Chinese traditional instruments. (More )

By Cindy Xu

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