By Shi Hong
The old master's family name was Mei — plum blossom — and he loved to paint them. The plum blossoms under his brush carried neither the flattery of popular taste nor the posturing of proud eccentricity. To look at them quietly was to feel they had grown of their own accord at the foot of some hill, in the depths of some grove — simple and unassuming, yet full of living vitality.
In the autumn of 1999, Master Mei came to stay in Jiujiang for a time. One day we visited an old gentleman surnamed Liu at a ceramics shop by the wharf. Over tea and idle conversation, Master Mei gestured toward a porcelain panel painting of plum blossoms inside the display case and asked me: "Can you see what's wrong with it?"
I said I could not.
"Every petal on this painting," he said, "is facing directly forward. Anyone who knows painting can see at once that this violates the principles of the art. Where in this world does every blossom on a tree grow facing the same direction? When you paint plum petals, you must be able to distinguish the full-face blossom, the back-face blossom, the three-tenths profile, the five-tenths, the seven-tenths — scattered and varied, so it looks true, so it doesn't look stiff. A painter must not only understand composition; he must learn to observe nature. Without that, he simply doesn't understand the principles of painting."
Then Master Mei turned the lesson toward me: "You may not paint plum blossoms, but you play Meihua — so you too must observe nature, or you won't understand the principles of the qin. Last night I heard you play New Meihua. You were quite fluent — one breath, galloping straight through, as if the wind wouldn't stop blowing, the plum tree and all its branches swept flat to one side. How is a plum blossom supposed to stand upright like that? There were so many friends at your home that evening, so I told you it was well played — I didn't want to embarrass you in front of everyone."
That evening, back at home, Master Mei played Old Meihua and explained its inner workings passage by passage. Two moments were especially illuminating.
The first: between the second and third nong, there is a passage of four short gun-fu ornaments. Master Mei explained in detail how to control the angle and speed of the fingers in each gun and fu, and stretched out his arm to show how an old plum trunk, caught by the wind, bends to one side and holds its ground against the force — then, when the gust passes, springs back by its own elasticity. This, he said, was how to portray the resilience of an old plum branch.
The second: in the two climactic passages after the third nong, several phrases feature shuang zhuang ornaments followed immediately by rapid li yin runs. Master Mei emphasized with great care exactly how to pause between the shuang zhuang and the li yin, how to create a continuous syncopated rhythm. He called this "the phoenix nods three times" — the image of snow accumulating on a branch until the weight becomes too great, the branch shaking the snow loose, then rebounding upward in a brief trembling from the sudden release of burden.
In all the years since, I have listened carefully to many players' performances of Old Meihua, and I have never encountered this rhythmic treatment — the "phoenix nods three times" — in any other interpretation. It appears to be entirely Master Mei's own insight and creation.
When he finished explaining, I said: "Master Mei, my New Meihua was something I fumbled through on my own from the score in the Guqin Anthology. Honestly, I've come to prefer listening to Old Meihua. Teach me Old Meihua when the time comes, and I'll set New Meihua aside."
Master Mei replied: "The principles are the same throughout. Once you understand the principles, New Meihua played well is beautiful too. Of course, if you love Old Meihua, I can teach it to you in time. These years you've learned quite a few pieces and developed a real feel for the Guangling fingering style — but you haven't reached the right moment yet. Take your time. I still have many pieces here waiting for you to learn. As I've always said: I'm not afraid of you coming to learn — I'm only afraid you won't be able to take it away with you."
In the years that followed, I continued studying with Master Mei, and kept his words — "take your time" — close to my heart. I never rushed. I always thought: the old man is vigorous and strong; another ten or twenty years is no problem at all.
No one could have foreseen that Master Mei would leave so soon. In the end, I never learned Old Meihua in its complete form from his hands. It was only a year ago, through repeated listening to his recordings, and by straining to recall the scattered fragments of what he had once said, that I was finally able to piece together a complete Old Meihua from the broken melodic shards I had carried all those years.
Listening to recordings of Old Meihua by the two great Guangling masters Liu Shaochun and Zhang Ziqian, one feels that Master Liu's version has a rhythm that is ancient and unyielding, resonant as metal and stone — towering like a cliff face a thousand feet high. Master Zhang's, by contrast, is free and unpredictable, shifting like clouds rolling through a mountain pass. Master Mei learned his Meihua from Liu Shaochun, yet both in its overall breath and in its melodic details, his version had changed greatly — he had even added new phrases of his own. This was already a form of personal "creation of voice."
In terms of musical character, Master Mei leaned toward expressing the side of the plum blossom that is full of flourishing life. His playing still belongs to the lineage of Old Meihua, yet in the roundness and fluency of its phrasing, something of his own musical personality flows through — and within it, faintly, moves a breath of New Meihua. This is not determined by surface melody or rhythm; it is entirely a fusion of inner temperament. To taste it carefully is to feel, without quite knowing why, that the old contains the new, and the new contains the old.
Master Mei once said: "After plum blossoms bloom in their fullness, they will fall — but this is not death. They dissolve into the spring earth, waiting for the year to come again."
A note on the two versions of Meihua Sannong: the piece has long existed in two forms — "Old Meihua" and "New Meihua." Both share the same origin; their melodic structure and note patterns are largely similar, but their rhythms differ markedly in character. The Guangling school transmits "Old Meihua," whose rhythm is bold and turbulent, its rises and falls carrying a distinctly ancient quality. "New Meihua," represented most famously by Wu Jinglue's interpretation, has a regular, elegant, and flowing rhythm more suited to modern musical sensibility; its melody has been widely accepted and arranged for many solo and ensemble instruments, giving it far broader circulation.
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Listen to Master Mei's recording: No.4 Mei Hua San Nong — Plum Blossom: Three Variations →
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