I had heard of Zhang Gong long before I ever read about him. He was a legend in the qin world — and he was from my hometown. The distance in our ages made a meeting impossible, or so I thought. Then I discovered that in the 1990s, he and my teacher's teacher, Mei Yueqiang, had crossed paths many times. I came across this account of his life by chance. I offer it here as a small tribute to the masters who gave so much to the guqin — and to whom we owe so much in return.
There is a guqin somewhere in Yangzhou with names carved into its back.
Not the names of its owner. The names of witnesses. Wu Jinglüe, Zhang Ziqian, Mei Yueqiang, Ding Chengyun, Dai Xiaolian — masters of the tradition, each one pressing a brush to the lacquer and leaving a mark. It was not vanity. It was a ceremony. They were signing their names to a moment: the first guqin made in Yangzhou since the founding of the People's Republic.
The man who made that qin was Zhang Gong.
And when someone asked him about it, he said: "The first new guqin in Yangzhou was made by me — but I could only make it, and make it well, because I was helped all along by these teachers and friends."
A Chance Encounter at the Nanjing Arts Institute
Zhang Gong was born in 1940 in Taixing, a small city that was then part of the Yangzhou prefecture. In 1959, he enrolled at the Nanjing Arts Institute, where he encountered Liu Shaochun — a core member of the Guangling Qin Society and one of the great masters of the Guangling school. Liu was warm and approachable, and felt a particular kinship with this earnest young student from his home region.
Under Liu's guidance, Zhang Gong heard the Guangling school for the first time — its restraint, its depth, its refusal to perform. Something took root. He would spend the rest of his life tending it.
Learning from Many Masters
In 1961, Zhang Gong graduated and came to work in Yangzhou. The city was still home to a remarkable constellation of qin players: Zhai Xiaobo, a student of Liu Shaochun; Xu Tonghua, a master of the Sichuan school who had settled in Yangzhou; and Hu Zifu and his son, a family with deep roots in both performance and instrument-making. Zhang Gong moved among them, listening and learning.
In 1963, Liu Shaochun retired from the Nanjing Arts Institute and returned to Yangzhou. He began hosting regular gatherings — qin players meeting to play, to discuss, to pass things on. Zhang Gong attended consistently, absorbing not only the techniques of performance but also the knowledge of how guqin were made and repaired.
The Injury That Changed Everything
In 1964, Zhang Gong injured his wrist. It was the kind of injury that ends a musician's relationship with their instrument — or transforms it.
Xu Lizan, one of the great figures of the Meiyan school and a master of both guqin and pipa, was visiting Yangzhou to teach. He saw Zhang Gong's situation and arranged for him to travel to Nantong for treatment. During the weeks of recovery, Xu Lizan taught him fingering techniques and classical pieces, and gave him a substantial collection of materials on guqin and pipa. He also shared his knowledge of instrument construction and repair.
It was during this period that Zhang Gong learned, systematically, how a guqin is made. The injury that threatened to take the instrument from him gave him instead a deeper way of knowing it.
Ten Years of Fieldwork
After the Cultural Revolution, guqin culture in Yangzhou lay scattered. Instruments had been hidden or destroyed. Scores had been lost. The living transmission had been interrupted.
In 1979, the Yangzhou Federation of Literary and Art Circles convened a meeting of folk musicians and instrument makers. Under the direction of Deputy Mayor Gao Jie, a research group on guqin and guzheng was formally established. Zhang Gong was appointed deputy director.
He took the work seriously. For years, he traveled through Yangzhou, visiting folk musicians, documenting surviving instruments — their forms, their materials, their histories. He collected scores, drew diagrams, measured and recorded. It was painstaking work, the kind that produces no immediate result but makes everything else possible.
By the time he was ready to make a qin, he knew exactly what he was doing.
The First Qin
In 1982, with support from the city's cultural authorities, Zhang Gong founded the first youth guqin training program in China. The students needed instruments. There were none to be had.
So he made them.
He searched for aged timber. He reviewed every record he had gathered during his years of fieldwork, measuring and drawing from historical sources. The lacquerwork presented the greatest challenge: he experimented repeatedly with the proportions of the ground coat, applying and sanding each layer by hand, seeking a finish that would be both durable and acoustically alive.
Four guqin were completed. They were not compromises. They were instruments made to the standard of a man who had spent twenty years learning what a guqin should be.
These instruments traveled with the students to Shanghai, where they studied under Zhang Ziqian and Gong Yi. They were examined and praised by Lü Ji, Gan Tao, and Cheng Wujia. Zhang Gong later donated them to the Zhongni Qin and Zheng Research Institute, where they are now kept as treasured artifacts at the Shouren Qin-Making Society — a collaboration between the institute and the School of Qin and Zheng at Yangzhou University.
Restoring the Guangling Qin Society
In 1984, after years of effort by Zhang Gong and his fellow members of the Guangling Qin Society, the society was formally restored. What followed was a period of remarkable exchange. Gong Yi, Cheng Gongliang, Mei Yueqiang, Ding Chengyun, Liu Shanjiao — masters came to Yangzhou, played, discussed, and shared. Some brought instrument diagrams and measurements. Some made qin themselves, side by side with Zhang Gong.
In the 1990s, Mei Yueqiang came to Yangzhou to teach. He and Zhang Gong spent time together studying the craft of qin-making — a master of performance and a master of construction, sitting in a city that had once been the center of everything, trying to understand what had been lost and what could still be recovered.
The qin with the famous names on its back — Wu Jinglüe, Zhang Ziqian, Mei Yueqiang, and the others — was a relic of the Third National Academic Conference on Guqin Notation, held in 1985. The masters who attended signed it. Zhang Gong kept it for years, then gave it away.
Zhang Gong passed away on November 7, 2016, in Yangzhou. He was seventy-six years old.
He gave everything — his time, his instruments, his knowledge, his hands — to the arts he loved. Under his leadership, Yangzhou reclaimed its place as the center of China's qin and zheng world. The tradition he refused to let die is still alive.
He never claimed the credit. "I could only make it, and make it well," he said, "because I was helped all along by these teachers and friends."
The Guangling school did not revive itself. It was revived by people. Zhang Gong was one of them.
Zhang Gong (1940–2016) was secretary-general of the Guangling Qin Society, co-founder of the Yangzhou Guzheng Association, and the maker of the first guqin produced in Yangzhou after the founding of the People's Republic. He is remembered as a foundational figure in the modern history of the Guangling school.
0 comments