In the Southern Storehouse of the Qing imperial palace, among forgotten objects and accumulated rust, lay a guqin. No one had touched it in years. When the Palace Museum's inventory team finally catalogued it, they wrote four characters beside its number:
破琴一张。 One broken qin.
It was assigned serial number Kun 107 and left where it was.
Rediscovery
In 1947, a young scholar named Wang Shixiang was working at the Palace Museum in Beijing. He found the qin in the storehouse, recognized it for what it was, and had it transferred to the treasury.
Two years later, with the museum director's approval, Wang entrusted the instrument to Guan Pinghu — one of the greatest guqin masters of the twentieth century — for restoration.
What Guan Pinghu held in his hands was a Tang dynasty guqin, crafted in 756 CE. Its maker: the Lei family of Sichuan, the most celebrated instrument-making lineage in Chinese history.
The Instrument
The Da Sheng Yi Yin (大圣遗音) is made in the Shennong style — one of the classical forms named after the mythological emperor who is said to have invented the guqin. Its body is paulownia wood (tong mu), finished in deep chestnut lacquer with black lacquer over it, and patches of vermilion where later hands made repairs. The surface bears snake-belly and ox-hair crack patterns — the unmistakable signature of a thousand-year-old lacquered instrument. The base shows fine wave-form cracks. Its frets are gold. Its tuning pegs and feet are antique celadon jade, the feet carved with mallow-petal motifs, the pegs six-ridged with pointed bases, hung with bright yellow silk tassels. The nut and tail piece are rosewood (zitan), finely worked.
Precise dimensions, as recorded by the Palace Museum:
- Total length: 120.3 cm
- Speaking length: 111 cm
- Forehead width: 19.2 cm
- Shoulder width: 20.2 cm
- Tail width: 13.5 cm
- Thickness: 5.2 cm
- Dragon Pool (round): diameter 7.6 cm
- Phoenix Vent (oval): 12 cm × 2.9 cm
Carved into the back, flanking the Dragon Pool, are sixteen characters:
巨壑迎秋，寒江印月。万籁悠悠，孤桐飒裂。
The great gorge welcomes autumn. The cold river holds the moon.
Ten thousand sounds fall silent. The lone paulownia splits in the wind.
Above the Dragon Pool, four characters in cursive script: 大圣遗音. Below it, a square seal in seal script: 包含. Inside the pool, in vermilion lacquer clerical script: 至德丙申 — the reign date, 756 CE.
Tap the back of the instrument: the sound is firm, resonant, with a long decay. Play a string: the tone is crisp, ancient in character.
— Catalogue note by Zheng Minzhong, Palace Museum
What the Instrument Carries
The name Da Sheng Yi Yin — "Sound Remaining from the Great Sage" — comes from the Han dynasty text Qian Fu Lun:
The great sage Yao was luminous and far-seeing. The great sage Shun let his virtue be heard.
A sage does not need to be present for his influence to remain. The sound he set in motion continues.
This is what the guqin has always understood: that music is not performance. It is transmission. A qin played in the Tang dynasty still carries something forward — through the hands of Guan Pinghu, through the storeroom where it waited, through the inventory clerk who wrote broken without knowing what he held.
Why We Tell This Story
At Seven String Qin, we are not in the business of museum pieces. We make instruments meant to be played — to be carried into rooms, tuned by hand, and sounded against the silence of an ordinary evening.
But we tell stories like this one because they remind us what the guqin is capable of becoming. Given time, given care, given the right hands: something that outlasts the names of everyone who ever touched it.
The sound remains. That is the tradition we work within.
Own a piece of this history — explore the Da Sheng Yi Yin replica at Seven String Qin.
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