Guangling school transmission. Transmitted by Liu Shaochun; based on the 《 Jiao'an Qin Score》. Composed by Mao Minzhong of the Southern Song dynasty. Shang mode. Three sections. Traditionally known as “the lesser Qiao Ge.”
The Shen Qi Mi Pu — the oldest surviving collection of guqin scores, compiled in 1425 — offers this preface to Shan Ju Yin:
“Serene and forgetful of the world, unentangled in its dust — taking the great mountains as a screen, the clear streams as a sash, heaven and earth as a dwelling, grass and trees as clothing. Pillowing on the current, rinsing the mouth with stone, wandering freely within. As for the pleasures of mountain moon and river wind, the sounds of birds and falling blossoms — all of these are inexhaustible, to be drawn upon without end. This is what it means to find joy in heaven and earth. And to hold the heart of Gan Lao and Quan Shi — this too is attained here.”
The piece depicts a woodcutter making his way into the mountains — shouldering his load, singing freely as he goes. Its structure is strict; its fingering ancient and vigorous; its melodic line rises and falls with the terrain. Techniques such as yang tuo and zhuang nao are used throughout, painting the scene with strokes that are at once bold and supple.
Hard and soft, empty and full, deft and plain, slow and swift — these qualities balance and answer each other across the three sections. In Mei Yueqiang’s hands, the piece became a full expression of his aesthetic: the Guangling school’s art of holding opposites in equilibrium, never forcing, never straining, letting the music find its own weight.
Shan Ju Yin has long been called “the lesser Qiao Ge” — a companion piece to the more famous Woodcutter’s Song, both attributed to Mao Minzhong. Where Qiao Ge carries the grief of political exile, Shan Ju Yin has already let that grief go. The mountain hermit is not fleeing the world. He has simply stopped needing it.
A Dream the West Already Knows
If you have ever dreamed of a cottage in the countryside — a cabin in the woods, a farmhouse at the edge of a field, a place where the noise of the world cannot reach — then you already understand Shan Ju Yin.
Western civilization spent two centuries pulling people off the land and into cities. Now, those who can afford to are moving back. A lakeside house at Lake Tahoe — pine forests, mountain air, water that reflects the sky — sells for tens of millions of dollars. What are people paying for? Not the square footage. They are paying for exactly what this music describes: mountains as a screen, clear water as a sash, the world held at a distance.
What surprises people is the realization that this dream is not modern, and not Western. A Chinese scholar-musician named Mao Minzhong was already living it — or at least playing it — eight hundred years ago. He took that longing, the one you feel when you look at a mountain and wish you could simply stay, and shaped it into three sections of music for a seven-string instrument.
The difference is this: in the Western imagination, the countryside is a retreat — somewhere you go to recover from the world. In the guqin tradition, the mountain is not a retreat. It is the destination. The hermit does not plan to return.
Mao Minzhong did not need to move back. He never left.
The Recording
This recording is from the 1991 Guangling Collection — the first of Mei Yueqiang’s two major recording sessions, made when he was in his early sixties. Listen for the fingering: the ancient roughness of the touch, the way each phrase settles before the next begins.
Recorded 1991 · China Conservatory of Music
For the best experience, we recommend listening with high-fidelity headphones or speakers.
For a deeper reading of this piece and its place in Mei Yueqiang’s mountain hermit tradition, see Tasting Mei · XII: The Joy of Mountains and Forests, Part Two.
This is the first in a series of 22 recordings by Mei Yueqiang, drawn from the 1991 and 2003 sessions. View the complete discography →
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