Learning GuZheng (1): History and Legend

GuZheng, sometimes is translated as Chinese Zither, is a traditional Chinese string music instrument which has over 2200 years history. The earliest GuZheng was made of banboo, had only 5 silk strings. Later, GUZheng evolved to 12 strings and wood body. Now the most popular modern GuZheng has 21 strings, neatly arranged on the elegant wood body, which is often decorated with Mosaic or Woodcarving.

In some sense, GuZheng can be taken as an analogy to the personalities that the traditional Chinese literates admire. With a discreet and elegant appearance, when playing, it makes sound like a breeze blowing over the top of trees, or a clear creek flowing across the rocks.

In ancient time, playing GuZheng was taken not just as entertaintment, but also as sort of meditation, seeking and expressing spiritrual connections. To show their respect to the music and sincerity of pursuing spiritual connections, the performers take a bath and change before touching it, and burn censer while playing the music.

There is a famous story about friendships made by playing GuZheng.

About 2300 years ago, there was a man named Yu Boya in Chu country. He served as a high rank officer of the country, and was also a musician who had spent years in studying the skills of playing GuZheng. Once he took a boat sailing to his hometown on river Han. In the evening, he hit a heavy thunderstorm, so the boat had to hide under a cliff to wait for the rain stopping. At mid night, the storm was over, and a peaceful full moon appeared on the clear sky. Felt pleasant at the beautiful night after the storm, Boya started to playing GuZheng. In the quiet night, the music and its echos created a wonderful spiritual world, and the sound reached far away. Boya was completely immersed in his music world.

Shortly after he finished one episode, suddenly he heard someone saying "nice music!"

Boya was surprised, asking who was speaking. Then a man walked out of the woods at the bank, saying that he was a woodman, named Zhong Ziqi, was avoiding the rain in the woods, and was surprised to get a chance to listen to the wonderful music.

"Can you tell me what you learned from my music?" Boya asked, doubting that how much music an illiterate woodman could understand.

"Your music draw a majestic mountain in front of me: lofty, noble, and solemn".

Boya was surprised, that's exactly what in his mind while he was playing the GuZheng. "Now let me play another piece, can you tell me what's you learned?"

After the music finished, Ziqi said: "I could see and feel a stream of clear water came out of mountain, becomes a waterfall, and flowing into a big river..."

Boya was so impressed by Ziqi's understanding and interpreting to his music, they started to chat about their experiences and understanding to many things in life. They were surprised that although the difference in social rank, education, and life experiences, they were like soul mates, be able to understand each other very easily. They then made each other sworn brothers.

One year after, Boya came to visit Ziqi again. Unfortunately, he learned that Ziqi already passed away. Boya was so sad and shocked, he visited Ziqi's grave yard, and played GuZheng for his soul mate. At the end of the music, the strings suddenly broken. Boya then left the GuZheng at the grave yard of the only one who could understand his music thoroughly, and never played GuZheng again.

(The earliest version of the story was from "吕氏春秋·本味"--a history and legend collection written by Lu Buwei around BC 239)

The Little World of A Water Drop

Once a friend forwarded me some pictures of water drops taken by high speed camera. One of them was a trickle of tap water, each drop has a reflection of the map of the world that was hanging on the wall behind...

So this is the little world of someone with no name, like a drop of water.

Simple as it is, a drop of water has thousands forms of existence: as a small foam on top of a wave, a piece of cloud, a flake of snow, a grain of ice under the feet of a penguin; or as the liquid inside a plant, a drop of tear of sadness or happiness.