In October 2000, the ancient city of Yangzhou became the setting for a quiet but historic encounter: a guqin master in a long silk changshan, seated before his instrument, playing for the President of France. This account was told to me by my teacher, Mei Shijun — son of Mei Yueqiang — who was present for these events. One small detail, I only understood many years later.
Yangzhou: A Homecoming with a Purpose
In mid-October 2000, French President Jacques Chirac and his wife made a state visit to China. The visit brought them to Yangzhou — one of the great cultural cities of China, a gesture of diplomatic hospitality: to show a foreign head of state not the modern face of China, but its ancient soul.
For a state occasion of this significance — a foreign head of state visiting China's cultural heartland — there could be no more fitting representation of Chinese civilization than a great guqin master performing the living tradition.
The Choice of Mei Yueqiang
At the time, Mei Yueqiang (梅曰强) — the Eleventh Patriarch of the Guangling School — was living and teaching in Yangzhou. After his retirement, he had returned to the city that was the spiritual home of the Guangling tradition, established his studio Yi Yun Zhai (移云斋, the Studio of Drifting Clouds) at No. 29 Jiǎndāo Lane, and was offering free instruction to all who came — accepting no tuition fees, turning no student away.
His reputation in Yangzhou was considerable. He was known not only as the foremost living master of the Guangling School, but as a man of exceptional personal refinement — the kind of character that the Chinese literati tradition had always sought to cultivate through the practice of the qin. When the time came to select a performer for the state reception, the choice was clear. Officials were dispatched to Yi Yun Zhai to extend the invitation. Mei Yueqiang accepted.
The Performance
During the state visit, President Chirac attended an evening program of Chinese cultural performances. Among them was Mei Yueqiang, performing on the guqin.
He appeared in a traditional changshan — the long scholar's robe that had been the dress of the Chinese literati for centuries. He took his seat before the instrument and played.
No recording of that evening has entered wide circulation. But those who were present have described the effect in consistent terms: the room fell silent. The sound of the guqin — ancient, unhurried, resonant — filled the space in a way that no other instrument quite does. It does not project; it draws the listener inward.
Chirac was known among world leaders for his genuine and scholarly passion for Asian art and civilization. He had studied Chinese history, visited China many times, and spoken publicly about his deep admiration for its artistic traditions. In Mei Yueqiang's playing, he encountered something he had perhaps read about but never heard: the living sound of the Chinese literati tradition, performed by one of its last great masters.
The Gift — and a Morning Encounter
Among the state gifts presented to President Chirac during the visit was a guqin — not a factory instrument or a decorative piece, but one that Mei Yueqiang had crafted with his own hands. Mei Yueqiang was not only a performer and teacher of the highest order; he was also a maker. The guqin presented to Chirac carried within it the full knowledge of a master who had spent his life in service to a single tradition.
The following morning, President Chirac was taking a walk in the garden when he came upon Mei Yueqiang playing in a corridor. He stopped and listened. When the music ended, he told Mei Yueqiang that he had never heard anything like it — so quiet, so ancient, so unlike anything in his experience. He then mentioned that he had received a remarkable gift the previous evening: a guqin.
Mei Yueqiang smiled and told him: that instrument was made by me.
The two men laughed, and shook hands warmly.
It is said that the guqin Mei Yueqiang crafted for President Chirac is now on display in the Louvre.
A Road Closed — and a Circle Completed
I have one more thing to add to this account — something I only understood many years after the fact.
On the day President Chirac's motorcade traveled to Yangzhou, the highway was closed. I was there, waiting below the overpass for the road to reopen, with no idea why it had been sealed. I was thirty years old. My child was six. I had never touched a guqin. The instrument meant nothing to me then.
It was only many years later that I learned what had happened that day: the road had been closed for the state visit. And that evening, while I waited on the highway below, Mei Yueqiang was already playing — for a head of state, in a room I could not have imagined entering.
What I did not know then — what none of us could have known — was that Mei Yueqiang had only three years left to live. He would pass away in August 2003. I would never have the chance to study under him. The window had already closed before I even knew it existed.
Twenty-six years have passed. My child has grown. And I have spent the better part of a decade inside the world of the guqin — not through Mei Yueqiang himself, but through his eldest son, Mei Shijun, who ten years after that evening in Yangzhou opened the door of the guqin world to me and led me in.
At the time, it seemed as though Mei Yueqiang, the guqin, and I existed in entirely separate worlds — the same city, the same moment, no connection at all. But the thread was already there, waiting to be found. It ran not through the father, but through the son. And it found me, in the end, exactly when it was meant to.
This is, I think, what the guqin does. It does not announce itself. It waits.
The First
Mei Yueqiang was, by any measure, the first person in Chinese history to present the guqin — as both a living performance and a crafted instrument — to a foreign head of state at the highest level of diplomatic ceremony. The guqin had never before been offered as a national gift. It had never before been the centerpiece of a state cultural program of this kind.
Three years later, in 2003, UNESCO would inscribe guqin music on its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Mei Yueqiang did not live to see it. He passed away in August of that year, just as the nomination was being finalized.
But what happened in Yangzhou in October 2000 was its own form of recognition — quiet, unhurried, and lasting. A head of state had listened. An ancient instrument had crossed a cultural boundary. And the man who made it possible had done so in the same spirit in which he had always lived: without fanfare, in a long scholar's robe, playing the music he had spent his life learning to carry.
For further reading on Mei Yueqiang's life and legacy, see: 梅曰强 — Wikipedia
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