On June 27, 2026, scholar Xue Guo'an stood before an audience at the Qinhuai District Library in Nanjing and posed a deceptively simple question: why has the guqin survived for three thousand years?
His answer wound through dynasties, rivers, and the rise and fall of cities — and it begins with a capital city that the world has largely forgotten.
When Nanjing Was the Center of the World
In 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang founded the Ming Dynasty and chose Nanjing as his imperial capital. The city exploded with cultural energy. Poets, painters, calligraphers, and musicians flooded into the capital, and the guqin — already ancient by then — found a new golden age. The Jinling school of guqin (金陵琴派), named after Nanjing's classical name, flourished under imperial patronage and the refined tastes of the literati class.
The Jinling school developed a distinctive aesthetic: measured, dignified, and deeply rooted in the Confucian ideal of music as moral cultivation. To play the guqin was not entertainment — it was self-refinement.
The Capital Moves North
In 1421, everything changed. Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor, relocated the imperial capital to Beijing. Nanjing retained the title of "secondary capital," but the cultural gravity shifted northward. Gradually, the city's artistic vitality faded. The Jinling school, without the concentrated wealth and patronage of a ruling court, slowly receded from prominence.
It did not disappear. But it grew quieter.
A New City Rises on the Grand Canal
A century and a half later, a different kind of prosperity emerged — not from imperial decree, but from commerce. Yangzhou, situated at the junction of the Yangtze River and the Grand Canal, became the nerve center of China's salt trade during the Qing Dynasty. Merchants grew fabulously wealthy. And wealthy merchants, as they always have, became patrons of the arts.
Into this environment came Xu Changyü (徐常遇), a guqin master who would become the founding patriarch of the Guangling school (广陵琴派). His collection, the Cheng Jian Tang Qin Pu (澄鉴堂琴谱, 1718), compiled with his son Xu Yi and funded by the official Nian Xiyao, became the first systematic documentation of what would grow into the most influential guqin tradition of the modern era.
The Guangling school was followed by a succession of landmark scores: the Wuzhizhai Qin Pu, the Ziyuantang Qin Pu, the Kumuchan Qin Pu, and the Jiao'an Qin Pu. Each generation produced masters. Each master produced students. The tradition compounded.
Why Guangling Is Famous — And What That Obscures
Today, when people speak of classical guqin tradition, they most often say "Guangling school." The name carries weight, history, and prestige. But this prominence is, in part, an accident of timing.
The Guangling school flourished later, in a period of greater literacy, more abundant printing, and richer documentation. Its scores survived in greater numbers. Its masters taught more students who went on to teach more students. The historical record is simply fuller.
The Jinling school came first. It shaped the aesthetic foundations upon which later traditions — including Guangling — were built. To speak only of Guangling is to describe a river without acknowledging its source.
A Scholar Who Insists on the Full Picture
Xue Guo'an, a member of the Jiangsu Provincial Institute of Culture and History and author of nearly a dozen books on classical Chinese culture, has spent years recovering what was nearly lost. His compilation of the Jinling Qin Pu Chu Bian (金陵琴谱初编) filled a significant gap in the historical record — restoring the Jinling school's documented legacy to its rightful place alongside Guangling.
His lecture in Nanjing was a reminder that the story of the guqin is not a single lineage, but a living conversation between schools, cities, and centuries.
That conversation continues.
This is the first article in The Qin Archive series on the history of guqin transmission.
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