News

Every Saturday Afternoon
Every Saturday Afternoon
I found a video on my phone — buried under two years of footage. It was from a class I had forgotten existed. This is what teaching the qin actually... Read more...
The China That Pearl Buck Almost Showed You
The China That Pearl Buck Almost Showed You
In 1930, Pearl Buck gave her protagonist a qin. Most Western readers missed it. The door she opened is still there. Read more...
The Forgery That Passed Through Innocent Hands
The Forgery That Passed Through Innocent Hands
In 2013, I drove 1,000 kilometers to Beijing to buy what I believed was a Tang dynasty qin. It wasn't. This is a story about what happened next — and... Read more...
光明致敬”纪念碑在9·11周年纪念日照亮曼哈顿的夜空
On the Strings, We Remember
There is a kind of grief that does not need a name. On days like this, the guqin understands. Read more...
A Master Born in the Dark
A Master Born in the Dark
During the Cultural Revolution, Mei Yueqiang hid his qin in a cave by day and practiced under a quilt by candlelight at night — his five children holding up the... Read more...
Gaize County, Ali Prefecture, Tibet — 4,415 meters
Plum Blossoms at 4,415 Meters — For Master Mei Yueqiang, on His 97th Birthday
On August 29 — the 97th birthday of Master Mei Yueqiang — I stopped along National Highway 317 in Gaize County, Tibet, at 4,415 meters. I took out my qin... Read more...
Jiuxiao Huanpei · V : The Price of Heaven
Jiuxiao Huanpei · V : The Price of Heaven
The Jiuxiao Huanpei has been valued at approximately 400 million yuan.In US dollars, at current exchange rates, that is roughly 55 million dollars.This number is not a sale price. The... Read more...
Jiuxiao Huanpei · IV : The Body
Jiuxiao Huanpei · IV : The Body
Before you hear a guqin, you see it.And what you see, when you look at the Jiuxiao Huanpei, is time made visible.The FormThe instrument is Fuxi style — one of... Read more...
Jiuxiao Huanpei · III : The Maker
Jiuxiao Huanpei · III : The Maker
In the history of Chinese instrument making, one name stands above all others.Not because of a single instrument. Because of a method — a philosophy of listening that began, according... Read more...
Jiuxiao Huanpei · II : The Verdict
Jiuxiao Huanpei · II : The Verdict
In the final decades of the Qing dynasty, Beijing had a guqin world.It was small — a handful of serious players, a few serious collectors, a network of scholars who... Read more...
Jiuxiao Huanpei · I : The Inscriptions
Most instruments are silent when they are not being played.The Jiuxiao Huanpei is not.Turn it over. Look at its back. The lacquer is dark — deep purple-black, the color of an ink stone — and across its surface, carved into the wood beneath, are words. Seals. Names. Dates. The accumulated testimony of everyone who has ever owned this instrument and felt compelled to say so.The qin has not been played in decades. But it has not stopped speaking.The Name, Carved in Seal ScriptAt the top of the back, above the... Read more...
Rosemarie, a Shopify Support Advisor, tells William Xu to write about the guqin and share its story with the world.
Rosemarie Said: "Sharing the Guqin's Story with the World — That Is What You Do Best"
I did not expect today to go the way it did.I logged into Shopify Support to handle a routine business matter — transitioning my store account from personal to my... Read more...
The First Gathering — Yuyuan Silk Society, December 2025
The First Gathering — Yuyuan Silk Society, December 2025
One hundred and fifty years ago, eight of China's greatest scholar-officials gathered in this garden. In December 2025, seven guqin players gathered in the same hall. The dynasties are gone.... Read more...
The Speed of Now — And the Hour That Belongs to You
The Speed of Now — And the Hour That Belongs to You
The Song Dynasty built one of history's greatest civilizations — and its educated class chose, deliberately, to be slow. What did they know that we have forgotten? And what happens... Read more...
Master, Friend, and Witness: Dong Xinbin on the Guqin Playing of Mei Yueqiang
Master, Friend, and Witness: Dong Xinbin on the Guqin Playing of Mei Yueqiang
In 1999, the painter and guqin student Dong Xinbin — one of the defining artists of his generation — painted a portrait of his teacher Mei Yueqiang and wrote an... Read more...
Two Schools, One River: How Politics and Commerce Shaped China's Guqin Tradition
Two Schools, One River: How Politics and Commerce Shaped China's Guqin Tradition
Why does everyone know the Guangling school of guqin — but almost no one knows Jinling? The answer lies in two imperial capitals, a salt trade boom, and six centuries... Read more...
The Seven Strings and What They Mean
The Seven Strings and What They Mean
The guqin has seven strings. This is not an accident of acoustics or convenience. Every string was placed with intention — each one carrying a name, a meaning, and a... Read more...
The Sound of Silence — What the Guqin Rests Mean
The Sound of Silence — What the Guqin Rests Mean
In 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 into deep space. Aboard it was a golden record — a message to whatever intelligence might one day find it, carrying the sounds and... Read more...
Chun Lei Restored: A Master's Work Speaks Again
Chun Lei Restored: A Master's Work Speaks Again
A note before we begin: this guqin is not the famous Tang Dynasty instrument also named Chun Lei (春雷), held in museum collections. This is a separate instrument — one... Read more...