Nanjing is the city this journal calls home — and the city where the author learned the qin, at his teacher's side, and where he now teaches it in free public classes. It is where the Silk Road entries begin: a city of city walls and riverside docks, of workshops and gardens, of the masters whose stories run through this site. This documentary introduces the city itself, with English narration — a way for readers to see the place behind the stories before the stories continue.
Nanjing has a garden called Yu Garden (愚园). In it, seven qin players play — and one of them is the author.
The Qin in Nanjing: Jinling
Nanjing's old name is Jinling, and Jinling is one of the great names in the qin's history. By the Ming dynasty, players spoke of three regional schools — the Zhe school of Zhejiang, the Min school of Fujian, and the Jiang school of the lower Yangtze, whose center was Jinling. [The standing of the Jiang school in the Ming sources is to be verified.]
The best-remembered voice of the Jinling school is Zhuang Zhenfeng, who lived in the city in the seventeenth century and published his Qin Xue Xin Sheng (The Heart's Voice of Qin Study) there. His best-known composition, Wu Ye Wu Qiu Feng (Autumn Wind, Dancing Through the Parasol Leaves), is alive in the modern repertoire — and on this site: it is No. 19 of Mei Yueqiang's twenty-two published recordings. [Dates and title of the book to be verified.]
The city's modern line runs through Xia Yifeng, whom this site has called Jinling's First Peak, and later through Mei Yueqiang, the Guangling master who made Nanjing his home. Today the tradition is known as the Jinling school and is on China's national intangible cultural heritage list. [The heritage listing to be verified.]
[A fuller description of the film will be added after the author reviews it.]
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