古乐器：只对你情有独钟！ - 2016年08月19日

WHEN Dong Jinyun tried to carve his own guqin with a kitchen knife nine years ago, he had no idea that the seven-string Chinese zither would become a key to understanding the country’s millennia-old culture.

“It was quite tough at the beginning because I didn’t know how to make it,” Dong says.

The ancient instrument has staged a comeback in recent years, riding a wave of renewed interest in the nation’s traditional culture.

With a history of over 3,000 years, the guqin has long been at the center of China’s musical life. It attracted sages like Confucius and even emperors, leaving famous pieces such as “High Mountain and Flowing Water.”

For millennia, any educated Chinese elite was expected to be proficient at playing guqin, along with the game of go, calligraphy and painting.

However, the contemplative guqin has lacked an understanding audience and has been eclipsed by other instruments in the 20th century, including Western imports like the piano.

After listening to several guqin masterpieces, Dong was mesmerized by what he called “the great sound of nature and inner peace.” He decided to start his own musical odyssey.

To craft his guqin, Dong collected every design and bit of information he could get from libraries, museums and the Internet. It took him more than three months to produce his first instrument, unpolished and unpainted, which professionals said was not qualified for performance.

Undaunted, Dong traveled as far as Shanghai, and Jiangsu and Shaanxi provinces in China’s east and west to learn from master guqin artisans and performers. He also visited timber markets across the country for paulownia and cedar wood.

Dong at first became a carpenter filling his toolbox with axes, saws, chisels and abrasive paper; and later a musician who could play many guqin pieces.

Four years ago, he moved his studio from his living room to an 1,100-square-meter workshop in suburban Kunming, Yunnan Province, as his craftsmanship became more refined.

It takes him at least 18 months to create a single instrument.

“The key to making a guqin is patience,” Dong says.

So far, he has produced more than 200 instruments, including a cedarwood master work made with agate, pearl, cinnabar, turquoise, red coral and lapis lazuli with raw lacquer.

Prices for his instruments range from 25,000 yuan (US$3,750) to 50,000 yuan each.

These sums are dwarfed by some recent sales. In 2010, a guqin owned by Emperor Huizong (1082-1135) of the Northern Song Dynasty fetched 137 million yuan in an auction in Beijing, a record for a musical instrument. Another guqin from the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) was auctioned off for 115 million yuan in Beijing in 2011.

As the guqin regains popularity, millions of people are pouring their time and money into the instrument. Dong estimates that there are about 30,000 guqin lovers in Yunnan Province alone.

“The guqin creates a bonding between the musician and the audience,” Dong says, citing the ancient story of musician Boya and woodcutter Ziqi.

According to the fable, Boya was playing a guqin in a forest when the passing Ziqi stopped to listen. As Boya strummed the sound of clouds, Ziqi saw them billowing; and when Boya conjured a waterfall, Ziqi saw it cascading.

Years later, when the woodcutter died, Boya knew no one could so intuitively comprehend his music as Ziqi did. So he smashed his instrument and quit playing.

“The sound of guqin can bring us inner peace,” Dong says. “It’s hard to imagine what Chinese culture would look like without it.”

Now 44, Dong is eager to pass on his knowledge to the younger generation. “Devotion and determination are what we need to inherit our cultural heritage,” he says.