A note on Yu Qiao Wen Da and the lineage that carried it
Whenever I ask Mei Shijun about Yu Qiao Wen Da — "Dialogue Between the Fisherman and the Woodcutter" — his answer is always the same.
"This piece came from Wang Jianhou," he says. "It is a Zhejiang school melody."
Mei Shijun is the eldest son of Mei Yueqiang, the great Guangling master whose recordings we carry here. He witnessed his father practice. He heard the stories. When he names a source, it is not speculation — it is memory.
The Zhejiang Line
The piece traveled through a specific chain of hands.
Master Daxiu was a wandering Chan monk who had passed through the great monasteries of Hangzhou and Suzhou — Yunju Temple, Hanshan Temple, Baoshan Temple — before settling quietly at a hermitage on Tianma Mountain. He belonged to the Zhejiang school, one of the oldest continuous lineages in qin history. Among his students were Xu Yuanbai and his brother Xu Wenjing in Hangzhou, Zhou Guanjiu in Suzhou, and Wang Jianhou in Nanjing.
Wang Jianhou received the piece from Daxiu. He passed it to Mei Yueqiang.
That is the line: Daxiu → Wang Jianhou → Mei Yueqiang.
The Doctor at the Dock
Wang Jianhou (1895–1980) ran a medical clinic at Xiaguan wharf in Nanjing — among the noise and the river smell, treating dock workers and the people that history does not record. He was also a partner in a musical instrument shop, a collector of ancient qin, and a player of quiet devotion.
These identities were not separate. A man who deals in instruments develops an eye — and an ear — for what is rare. Wang Jianhou's collection included a Tang dynasty qin, two Song dynasty instruments, and a Ming dynasty qin called Gu Mei — "Ancient Plum" — that had passed through Daxiu's own hands before coming to him.
He was, in other words, a man who lived inside the tradition, not merely beside it. The piece he carried was not just learned — it was inhabited.
The Proof in the Sound
Xu Yuanbai, Wang Jianhou's fellow student under Daxiu, passed his playing down through his own line. His grandson, Xu Junyue, is an active player today.
I have listened to Xu Junyue play Yu Qiao Wen Da. I have listened to Mei Yueqiang's recording of the same piece — the one made in 1991, now part of the archive on this site.
The resemblance is not superficial. The phrasing, the breathing of the melody, the particular weight given to certain passages — ninety percent identical. Two players, two lineages, one century apart, both tracing back to the same monk on Tianma Mountain.
This is what transmission means. Not the preservation of a score, but the carrying of a sound — from hand to hand, ear to ear, generation to generation — until it arrives, still recognizable, a hundred years later.
The Handwritten Score
Wang Jianhou kept a handwritten copy of Qin Xue Jin Qiu — a Qing dynasty collection of qin scores compiled by Zhuang Zhenfeng. Three volumes, bound in the traditional manner, the pages now aged.
Yu Qiao Wen Da is listed in the table of contents.
The book still exists. The recording still exists. The melody is the same.
A Note on the Piece Itself
The fisherman and the woodcutter are not heroes. They are ordinary men — one working the water, one working the mountain — who meet and talk about the nature of things. Their conversation is not urgent. There is no conflict to resolve. They simply sit together, somewhere between the river and the forest, and speak.
Wang Jianhou spent his days at a wharf clinic, among people who worked with their hands and were not remembered by name. That he carried this particular melody — of two ordinary men in unhurried conversation — seems, in retrospect, entirely fitting.
The piece did not require a grand setting to survive. It required only the right hands to pass it forward.
Wang Jianhou was one of those hands.
Yu Qiao Wen Da as recorded by Mei Yueqiang is available in the Recordings section of this site. Wang Jianhou's biography appears in the previous entry in this series: By Day, a Doctor. By Night, a Qin Player.
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