Mei Yueqiang had five teachers in his life. On quiet afternoons, I sometimes saw him count them out on his fingers with quiet deliberateness — Wáng Jiànhóu, Zhào Yúnqīng, Xià Yīfēng, Xū Tónghúa, Liú Shǎochūn. Of the five, two were women: Zhao and Xu.
Of Zhao Yunqing, we have one image. In the 1937 edition of Jinyu — the celebrated qin journal of that era — there is a photograph titled "Playing Until the Plum Blossoms Fill the Qin with Moonlight." A woman sits on a stone, a qin laid across her lap. We do not know who she is. Standing slightly behind her, half-hidden among dense branches of winter plum, is another woman. That is Zhao Yunqing.
She is not the one playing. She is the one watching.
In the Jinyu registry of qin players, she is listed under her married name: Xú Zhào Jǐn, courtesy name Yúnqīng, studio name Shuāng Qín Guǎn — the Studio of Two Qin. Her entry reads simply: "Married to Xu."
Her husband, Xu Sen — courtesy name Zhīsūn, studio name Wàngyún Shān Guǎn — appears in the same registry. His entry is considerably more vivid: he could play "several pieces," held "more than ten qin" and "dozens of volumes of scores," had written "tens of thousands of words," practiced the arts of "qin-making and painting bamboo," and possessed the refined habit of "drinking up to one dou of wine." Most striking of all is his final note: "He no longer plays, no longer collects — he only makes qin and listens."
One wonders: was it his wife he was listening to?
Zhao Yunqing left the school column in her registry entry blank. We do not know her lineage. We do not know, in precise detail, which pieces she passed on to Mei Yueqiang — only that some melodies first learned from Wáng Jiànhóu were later re-steeped, re-shaped, through her hands and those of Xià Yīfēng. By the time Mei Yueqiang reached old age, the pieces he returned to most often were those transmitted by Xia and Liu Shaochun.
But somewhere in those melodies, perhaps, is still the shadow of a woman standing among plum branches, watching.
This article is adapted from the original Chinese text by Shi Hong. Published in the Memorial Anthology of Mei Yueqiang. Translated and adapted by William Xu.
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