Zhou Zuoren was a twentieth-century Chinese essayist and translator, and the younger brother of the writer Lu Xun. He wrote with curiosity about many parts of everyday life. Yet on one subject he was disarmingly frank: he did not understand the guqin.
The first time he went to hear it, he could hardly hear it at all.
At a concert at Peking University, the qin player Wang Lu sat down to perform. The audience fell quiet and strained to listen. From where Zhou sat, the player's hands could be seen moving up and down, almost as if he were working an abacus. The sound itself scarcely reached him.
This was not a failure of attention. When a listener sits far away and the instrument is quiet, no amount of concentration can pull the sound across the room.
Years later, Zhou listened again. This time he was in the office of another qin player, Zheng Yingsun, with only his daughter beside him. Now he could hear the instrument clearly. But he still could not tell what made the music good. He did not presume to call it bad; he simply could not hear what others heard in it.
The first difficulty was not hearing. The second was hearing without understanding. Moving the qin into a smaller room solved one problem, but it did not automatically solve the other.
Zhou felt a little ashamed. Not understanding the guqin seemed, to him, an unflattering admission. I find the admission valuable for exactly that reason. He did not pretend to be moved, and he did not dismiss the instrument because he could not follow it. He described what happened when he listened.
The guqin is sometimes introduced with so much solemnity that a newcomer may feel obliged to know its history, its notation, and its schools before daring to have an opinion. Someone who cannot enter the music may be afraid to say so.
But not understanding is no offense. You might begin by noticing how one note sounds and fades. You might also say, honestly, “I can hear it now, but I don't yet know what to listen for.” That does not shut the door on the guqin. It is a truthful way to stand at the door.
Zhou's two encounters offer something for players to consider, too. Helping people hear the qin and helping them find their way into its music are different tasks. A suitable room or sound system may help with the first. The second may take time, and someone willing to listen alongside a newcomer rather than demand immediate admiration.
Not everyone will love the guqin the first time they hear it. Zhou Zuoren did not. That is all right.
The music does not need listeners to pretend they understand. It needs room for them to listen honestly, and decide whether to listen again.
Based on Zhou Zuoren's recollection of two guqin performances in “Guoyue de Jingyan” (“Experiences of Chinese Music”). The dates and historical interpretation of these events are separate from Zhou's own account.
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