One hundred and fifty years ago, eight of China’s greatest scholar-officials gathered in this garden — men who had passed the imperial examinations at the highest level, who wrote poetry on its walls and inscribed couplets above its doors. They came for the music, the stones, and the conversation.
In December 2025, seven guqin players gathered in the same garden. The examinations are long gone. The dynasty is long gone. But the silk strings are still here.
The Hall
Above the entrance, four characters carved in wood: Yi Qin Bai Shi Zhai — “The Hall of Leaning on the Qin and Bowing to the Stone.” The hall was built in 1876 by Hu Enshao, a scholar-official who resigned his post as a candidate prefect of Suzhou and returned to Nanjing to care for his aging mother. He purchased a derelict Ming Dynasty garden on the southwestern edge of the city — by then reduced to a vegetable plot — and spent two years transforming it into Yuyuan: the Garden of Foolish Longing.
The name was chosen with characteristic scholar’s irony. To leave office, to tend a garden, to care for one’s mother — these were the “foolish” choices of a man who had decided that some things mattered more than rank. He built a studio he called “The Hall of Leaning on the Qin and Bowing to the Stone,” and filled it with music and scholar’s rocks.
In the decades that followed, the garden became a gathering place for some of the most distinguished minds of the late Qing. Eight men who had achieved the rank of zhuangyuan — first place in the imperial examinations, the highest academic honor in Chinese civilization — visited Yuyuan and left their calligraphy, their couplets, and their poems on its walls. Among them: Zhang Jian, the industrialist and educator who founded over twenty enterprises; Liu Chunlin, the very last zhuangyuan in Chinese history, whose examinations in 1904 marked the end of a system that had endured for over a thousand years.
The garden survived revolution, fire, and neglect. Restored and reopened to the public in 2016, it was designated a Jiangsu Provincial Cultural Heritage Site in July 2025 — the same year the Yuyuan Silk Society was founded within its walls.
For over a century after the fall of the Qing, the hall’s strings had gone quiet. The guqin tradition found its home elsewhere — most notably in Suzhou’s Yiyuan, where the Wumen Qin Society has gathered on the first and fifteenth of every lunar month since 1986, an unbroken thread of silk and sound.
On December 15, 2025, seven players gathered in that hall and changed that.
The Players and Their Pieces
Each player brought two pieces, each chosen from a specific historical score — a practice that reflects the society’s commitment not just to playing the guqin, but to understanding where each piece comes from and who carried it forward.
Xue Guo’an opened with Autumn River Night Mooring and Wild Geese Descending on the Sandbank, both from his own Yiyunzhai Qin Scores — a collection he compiled himself.
Guo Ping played Autumn Thoughts on Dongting Lake from the Cha Fuxi combined edition, and King Wen’s Lament from the Wugang Qin Scores, in the edition transcribed by Cheng Gongliang.
Xie Kunfang performed Plum Blossom Prelude from the Wugang Qin Scores, transcribed by Liu Zhengchun, and Orchid in Seclusion from the Chuncaotang Qin Scores, transcribed by Wang Shengxiang.
Xu Wei played Returning Home — Tao Yuanming’s great poem of resignation and return, set to silk strings — from Yang Lun’s Zhenchuan Zhengzong Qin Scores in Wu Zhao’s performance edition, and Pu’an Incantation in the Beijing Guqin Research Society edition. In a hall built by a man who had also chosen to leave office and return home, the choice of piece was not incidental.
Guo Simiao performed Flowing Streams from the Tianwenge Qin Scores in Guan Pinghu’s performance edition — the same piece, the same master’s interpretation, that NASA placed aboard Voyager 1 in 1977 to represent humanity to the stars. He followed it with Lament for the Unicorn from the Shengqi Mipu, also in Guan Pinghu’s edition.
Liu Sheng and Han Fei completed the fourteen pieces that filled the winter afternoon.
Silk Strings Only
Every piece was played on silk strings. This is not a minor detail. In the contemporary guqin world, the vast majority of players use modern metal-nylon strings, which are louder, more stable, and easier to maintain. Silk strings are quieter, more complex in timbre, and demand a different kind of touch — softer, more patient, more attentive to the natural decay of each note.
The Yuyuan Silk Society was founded on the conviction that silk strings are not an affectation or a historical curiosity. They are the sound the instrument was designed to make. To play silk is to accept a certain difficulty — and to receive, in return, a certain depth.
A Poem Hidden in Seven Lines
At the close of the gathering, a poem was shared — seven lines, each containing the title of one of the pieces played that day:
Night mooring on the autumn river, Pu’an incantation,
Autumn thoughts on Dongting, remembering old friends.
Returning home, plum blossom prelude,
Wild geese on the sandbank, lament for the unicorn.
Drunken fisherman at dusk, following the flowing streams,
King Wen’s longing for the worthy, sighing over the orchid.
Seven pieces, woven into seven lines. The gathering encoded in verse.
Two Gardens, One Tradition
A poet who attended wrote four quatrains to mark the occasion. One verse captures the spirit of the day:
A hundred years of qin tradition, now renewed —
Seven players, hearts devoted to the unadorned silk string.
And another answers the question of whether Nanjing’s Yuyuan need look to Suzhou’s Yiyuan for its measure:
No need to envy Yiyuan’s moonlit pavilion —
The weathered stone still listens as Tao Yuanming returns home.
For over a century, Suzhou’s Yiyuan kept the guqin tradition alive in the Jiangnan region. Now, across the distance, Nanjing’s Yuyuan has answered. The two gardens — built by two friends who shared a love of stone and silk strings — are in conversation again.
The strings are no longer silent.
The Gathering Continues
The Yuyuan Silk Society meets regularly. Each gathering is recorded in full. One piece from each meeting is selected and released publicly. The rest remains in the society’s private archive — a growing collection of silk-string music, played in a garden that has finally found its voice again.
The Yuyuan Silk Society was co-founded by Xu Wei and six fellow guqin players in Nanjing. All members play silk strings exclusively. Selected recordings from each gathering are released through Seven String Qin.