The guqin stands first among the Four Arts of the Chinese literati — qin, chess, calligraphy, and painting. This is the story of one extraordinary instrument: "Yi Yun Zhai Xin Zhi" (移云斑心旨), the most beloved guqin of Grandmaster Mei Yueqiang, the Eleventh Patriarch of the Guangling School. Written by his son Mei Shijun, with a personal note by William Xu, student of Mei Shijun.
A Lineage of Three Generations
To understand this guqin, one must first understand the lineage it carries. Mei Yueqiang (梅曰强, 1929–2003) was the Eleventh Patriarch of the Guangling School of guqin — one of China's most distinguished and ancient musical traditions. Inspired by guqin master Wang Jianjian, he formally began his studies in 1943, and later studied under the great masters Xia Yifeng, Zhao Yunqing, Xu Tonghua, and the Tenth Guangling Patriarch Liu Shaochun. Over nearly sixty years of playing and teaching, he became the defining voice of the Guangling style.
His son, Mei Shijun (梅士军), inherited both the instrument and the responsibility of carrying the Guangling tradition forward. Among Mei Shijun's students is William Xu, who had the rare privilege of playing this very guqin for several months — and even left his own small mark upon it, as we shall recount.
A Beijing Encounter: The Old Master Offers His Treasure
— Narrated by Mei Shijun
Around the year 2000, my father was invited to Beijing by the Chinese Music Research Institute to record his repertoire. One evening after a recording session, word reached him at his lodgings that an elderly guqin master in the city wished to sell one of his instruments. My father went with a student to have a look.
The moment the instrument was brought out, my father recognized it at once as a Fuxi-style guqin. He examined it carefully: 125 centimeters in total length, a paulownia soundboard, a catalpa back panel, mother-of-pearl hui markers, green jade tuning pegs, and green jade geese-foot stands (one later replaced with rosewood). The headstock was inlaid with a jade ruì beast ornament; the nut and tail piece were fashioned from rosewood. The lacquer was the deep reddish-brown of deer-antler powder, interspersed with cinnabar from generations of repairs. Across the entire body ran the magnificent "large snake-belly" crack pattern — the hallmark of a truly ancient instrument. The soundboard joints were immaculate, the inner pillars perfectly secure, and the interior had never been opened or altered.
My father placed his fingers on the strings and struck a note. A sound rang out like bronze and jade. He played a few more phrases — the tone was ancient, clear, mellow, and pure. He was overjoyed, and played on, performing the great Guangling piece Ping Sha Luo Yan (Wild Geese Descending on the Sandbank) and other classics.
The old master was so moved by my father's playing that when the music ended, he offered to give the guqin as a gift — a gesture in the spirit of "a precious sword given to a true hero." My father, fully aware of the instrument's value, insisted on paying. After much courteous negotiation, he acquired the guqin at a remarkably modest price.
Wang Shixiang Names the Guqin
In 2002, as my father was preparing to record his personal album, the guqin master Tao Yi introduced him to Wang Shixiang (王世襄, 1914–2009) — the most celebrated connoisseur and collector of Chinese antiquities of his generation. My father brought the newly acquired guqin to their meeting, and the two men spent the afternoon in the finest tradition of literati friendship: music as the language of the soul.
Wang Shixiang listened to my father perform a program of Guangling masterworks. Afterward, he praised both the playing and the instrument with equal admiration. He declared the guqin to be a Ming dynasty piece, noting its high and ancient lacquer surface, its slender and elegant form, and its exceptionally resonant, long-sustaining tone.
When the time came to inscribe the title of my father's album, Wang Shixiang wrote five characters: 移云斑心旨 — Yi Yun Zhai Xin Zhi. The meaning was twofold: "Yi Yun Zhai" (移云斑, "Studio of Drifting Clouds") was my father's studio name; "Xin Zhi" (心旨, "the heart's true purpose") expressed Wang's hope that my father, as the patriarch of the Guangling School, would continue to transmit the essence, spirit, and technique of the Guangling tradition to future generations. Wang Shixiang also proposed that this newly acquired guqin bear the same name.
Upon returning home, my father had "移云斑心旨" engraved on the back of the instrument. Later, my brother Mei Shijun invited the celebrated calligrapher and connoisseur Xiao Ping (萧平) to add a second inscription: 广陵派第十一代宗师梅曰强藏琴 — "Guqin from the collection of Mei Yueqiang, Eleventh Patriarch of the Guangling School."
The Final Recording: A Race Against Time
Between March 2002 and June 2003, my father — already in his seventies and in declining health — took up residence in Beijing for an extended period. Sensing that his time was short, he was determined to leave behind a complete record of the Guangling repertoire. With the support of the Chinese Music Research Institute and other collaborators, he undertook an urgent, painstaking project of notation and recording.
The instrument at the heart of these sessions was "Yi Yun Zhai Xin Zhi" — the Ming dynasty guqin he had so recently acquired and named. The ancient instrument's deep, weathered voice, with its complex overtones and long resonance, merged perfectly with my father's consummate technique — his mastery of yin nao chuo zhu (吟猏绰注), the subtle ornamental gestures that define the Guangling style. Together, they gave full expression to the school's defining aesthetic: the balance of strength and tenderness, of tone and resonance.
The resulting album, Yi Yun Zhai Xin Zhi, runs to over four hours and is widely regarded as one of the most important guqin recordings of the modern era — second only to the earlier landmark recordings of Liu Shaochun. The project brought together an extraordinary constellation of cultural figures: Wang Shixiang inscribed the album title; the celebrated author Yu Qiuyu (余秋雨) was so moved by my father's artistry and moral character that he wrote the preface; and Jiang Zequn, granddaughter of Jiang Shixi — a founding figure of the Guangling Qin Society — served as consultant at the age of seventy.
Tragically, in August 2003 — at the very moment when the guqin was being formally nominated as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity — my father passed away suddenly. The Beijing recordings became his final artistic testament. The album was published in 2006 by Jiangsu Electronic Audio-Visual Press, comprising twenty pieces across two collections: the "Jinling Collection" and the "Guangling Collection." It fulfilled the last wish of his life.
A Personal Touch: Pāua Shell from New Zealand
— A note by William Xu
Some years after my teacher Mei Shijun inherited this guqin from his father, I had the extraordinary privilege of playing "Yi Yun Zhai Xin Zhi" for several months. During that time, I noticed that one of the hui markers — the small inlaid discs that mark the harmonic positions along the string — had been damaged at the seventh position (第七徽) and needed replacing.
I had recently returned from New Zealand, where I had eaten a large black-lipped pāua abalone. I kept the shell. Pāua shell is unlike the ordinary white river-clam shell traditionally used for guqin hui markers: it shimmers with an iridescent spectrum of deep greens, blues, purples, and golds — colors that shift with the light like the surface of a still mountain lake at dusk.
I carefully cut and shaped a new hui marker from the pāua shell and set it into the seventh position of the instrument. When I returned the guqin to my teacher Mei Shijun, that marker remained — a small, quiet trace of the South Pacific on a Ming dynasty instrument that had already traveled so far through time.
I think of it sometimes: a guqin born in Ming dynasty China, named by one of the great scholars of the twentieth century, recorded as the voice of a dying master's final testament — and carrying, in one small point of iridescent color at the seventh hui, a fragment of the New Zealand sea.
More Than a Guqin
— Mei Shijun
In 2004, after my father passed away, I carried "Yi Yun Zhai Xin Zhi" back to Nanjing on my back. Whenever I play it now, I often feel my father standing behind me, listening, nodding gently.
The guqin is worth a great deal today. But what my father left to us, his descendants, is not merely an instrument. What he left is something far more important: the art and the virtue of the Guangling School.
To others, "Yi Yun Zhai Xin Zhi" may be simply a name. To me, it is a responsibility — a long road, and a heavy one, stretching ahead.
— Written by Mei Shijun. Additional note by William Xu.
To hear this instrument speak — listen to William Xu perform Xianweng Cao — The Opening Hymn of Guqin on Yi Yun Zhai Xin Zhi. It is the piece every guqin student plays first. Sixteen years after his own first lesson, William returns to it on this very instrument.
0 comments