How a boy in a coal-mining town found his way to the ancient strings
In 1955, in the small mining city of Liaoyuan in northeastern China, a teenage boy was listening to the radio when he heard a sound he could not explain.
It was not the brightness of a pipa, not the sweetness of an erhu. It was something older. Something that seemed to come from a place before music had a name. Seven strings. Silence between the notes. A voice that did not hurry.
The performer was Guan Pinghu. The instrument was the guqin.
The boy's name was Li Xiangting — born Li Lingqiu — and he was fifteen years old. And in that ordinary moment — a winter evening, a radio, a small apartment in a coal-mining town — something in him was permanently changed.
The Paper Qin
There was no guqin in Liaoyuan. There was no teacher, no music store, no way to hear it again except to wait by the radio. But Li Xiangting could not forget that sound.
So he built one.
From a wooden signboard, erhu strings, and thumbtacks, he constructed an instrument. He found an old copy of Jingu Qiguan — a collection of classical Chinese tales — and used its descriptions of the qin as his blueprint. When he had no suitable wood, he made a paper model instead, tracing the curves of the instrument with his fingers, practicing the motions of pressing and plucking on strings that made no sound.
He was teaching himself to play an instrument he had never touched.
Moon Over the Mountain Pass
Months passed. Li Xiangting listened to every guqin broadcast he could find, learning by ear, note by note, with no teacher and no score.
One evening, at the school's Spring Festival celebration, he performed Guanshan Yue — "Moon Over the Mountain Pass" — together with a classmate. The audience applauded.
But Li Xiangting knew.
He was nowhere near good enough.
That night, he sat down and wrote two letters — one to Zha Fuxi, one to Pu Xuezhai, both masters whose playing he had heard on the radio but never met. He did not know their addresses. He sent the letters through the radio station, hoping they might find their way.
They did.
The Letter
Zha Fuxi read the letter from the boy in Liaoyuan — a boy who had heard the guqin on the radio, built himself an instrument from scraps of wood and string, taught himself a piece by ear, and was now asking, simply, to be taught.
He was deeply moved. He wrote back:
"Comrade Li Lingqiu, I received your letter from around October. We were very touched. I want to do everything I can to help you learn the guqin. Come to Beijing next summer, and I will teach you."
Li Xiangting (born Li Lingqiu) had received his answer.
The Summer in Beijing
The following summer, Li Xiangting boarded a train to Beijing. He brought with him his paper qin model.
Zha Fuxi did not just teach him fingering and notation. He took him to historic sites, showed him paintings and calligraphy, brought him to performances of kunqu opera and Peking opera. He understood that the guqin could not be learned in isolation — it had to be felt through the whole of Chinese culture.
By the end of that summer, Li Xiangting had learned five pieces. He had mastered the notation system. And in a gesture of quiet trust, he was asked to restring one of Zha Fuxi's own ancient qins.
Before he left, Zha Fuxi gave him a qin from the Qing dynasty, two xiao flutes, and a stack of books. He walked him to the train himself.
Three Masters, One Voice
Li Xiangting went on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music, where he became a student of Wu Jinglüe — widely regarded as the greatest guqin performer of the twentieth century. He later absorbed the influence of Guan Pinghu as well, the very man whose voice on the radio had first awakened him.
He would later describe his formation this way:
"Zha Fuxi's art is the foundation of my art. Wu Jinglüe's art is the main body of my art. Guan Pinghu's art is an important part of my art."
Three masters. Three rivers flowing into one.
Into Space
Decades later, Li Xiangting's recordings were carried aboard Shenzhou IX and Shenzhou X — China's crewed space missions of 2012 and 2013.
The guqin, born in antiquity, played by scholars and hermits and emperors, had traveled beyond the atmosphere.
It is worth remembering: the first time a guqin recording left Earth was in 1977, aboard Voyager 1, when NASA chose Guan Pinghu's performance of Flowing Streams to represent humanity to the universe.
The same Guan Pinghu. The voice on the radio. The one who started everything.
What Remains
Li Xiangting once said: "I do not treat the guqin as a livelihood. A profession is livelihood plus passion. A calling requires only love."
He does not use a smartphone. He cooks his own meals. He paints, writes poetry, plays the xiao. He calls himself an ordinary person living an ordinary life.
But he has taught students across China and around the world. He has performed on every continent. And it all began with a boy who heard something on the radio one winter evening, went home, and built himself a paper qin.
Some sounds, once heard, cannot be unheard.
Perhaps you know the feeling.
Li Xiangting (b. 1940) is a professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and one of the most influential guqin masters of the contemporary era. He is a designated inheritor of China's National Intangible Cultural Heritage.
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