In 1425, Zhu Quan compiled Shenqi Mipu, preserving a precious body of qin music for later generations.
Five hundred and eighty-five years later, in 2010, the complete thirty-volume Qinqu Jicheng appeared. It brought together 142 historical qin sources, including Shenqi Mipu, spanning more than a thousand years of musical history.
The intervening centuries were not an empty space. Musicians continued to compile and transmit their music. The achievement of Qinqu Jicheng was to gather those scattered inheritances so that later readers could consult, compare, and study them, and seek music within their pages.
This monumental work embodies Zha Fuxi’s decades of dedication.
Qinqu Jicheng, a monumental collection of historical qin documents.
As early as 1919, he wrote in his diary of his wish to gather the teachings of different qin traditions, bring new knowledge into the work, and compile a collection that could revive neglected learning. The complete publication still lay more than ninety years ahead. He could not have known its eventual scale, but the purpose was already there.
His career took him into aviation and public affairs, yet he never abandoned the qin. Correspondence with musicians, the organization of qin societies, inquiries about manuscripts, and the collection of documents all served that purpose. During his American visit in 1945, he also copied qin materials at the Library of Congress and brought them back to China.
The nationwide survey of 1956 brought further rare sources to light. But finding a manuscript was not the same as making it available.
Many rare or unique copies belonged to libraries or private collectors. Some were overseas; others lay within larger collections of writings. A musician could spend a lifetime seeing only a small part of this inheritance. Comparing different versions of a piece could be difficult before a single note was played.
Zha sought to change that situation.
In his account of copying the manuscripts formerly owned by Hu Gongxuan in Shanghai, he recorded repeated approaches through intermediaries, negotiations, and efforts to obtain photographic copies. Xu Sen helped establish contact, and Shen Zhongzhang was involved in the arrangements. Permission to photograph the books did not end the difficulties: obtaining copies for study still required coordination and urgent correspondence.
Zha also recorded collectors’ reluctance to sell documents to public institutions, including fears about attracting attention to the proceeds or facing criticism during political campaigns. The existence of a manuscript did not guarantee access to it. The pages we can turn today were once the subject of repeated requests and negotiations.
Two pages from Zha Fuxi’s account of copying the Hu Gongxuan manuscripts: a record of the practical obstacles behind preservation.
Zha pressed for support for a collected facsimile publication. In 1960, arrangements were agreed for Zhonghua Book Company to publish Qinqu Jicheng. Collecting, selecting sources, identifying editions, investigating lineages, organizing the undertaking, and writing introductions demanded sustained scholarly and practical work.
This was not simply an anthology of a few famous pieces for students to play.
One title could survive in several versions, with different fingerings, sections, and expressive choices. These were not useless repetitions. They were evidence of music passing through different hands and different periods. Preserving them left later musicians the possibility of comparison.
Zha insisted that the adopted material retain its original form. As quoted in Fu Murong’s study, his editorial principle was that tablature and theoretical writing alike should be preserved faithfully: where no other edition could supply a missing or damaged passage, the surviving evidence should remain as it was, including losses, stains, and insect damage.
A missing passage was not to be made whole through imagination. An unfamiliar idea was not to be removed merely because a later reader found it difficult. Preservation should not decide every question on behalf of the future.
The later part of the collection did have selection criteria; faithful reproduction did not mean every page of every surviving source was included. The distinction mattered: selection determined the scope, while facsimile reproduction preserved the evidence within that scope.
Alongside the images, Zha wrote introductions identifying collections, compilers, editions, musical features, and connections between traditions. He wanted not only to save documents, but to help later readers find their way into them.
In my judgment, this was another immense contribution to the qin. He worked to preserve not only the music he could play, but also music that his generation had yet to understand fully or bring back into sound. He left a foundation upon which others could continue.
No single generation could complete an undertaking of this scale.
Zha died in 1976 without seeing the complete thirty-volume publication. His pupil Wu Zhao continued the organization, correction, and review, carrying his teacher’s purpose forward and enriching the work. In 2010, fifty years after the publication arrangements had been agreed, the full set was issued. At its launch, Wu played Yi Gu Ren, “Remembering an Old Friend,” in remembrance of predecessors who had devoted themselves to the work but had not lived to see that day.
On November 10, 2018, I bought my set for RMB 5,980. I had hesitated for a long time. The reason was simple: it was expensive.
My purchase record, November 10, 2018.
At the time, I did not know that I would later become Wu Zhao’s student. Only in researching this article did I come to understand more deeply the work he had carried forward from his teacher.
That makes me, through this line of teaching, a second-generation disciple of Zha Fuxi. When I was hesitating over the price, I had no idea there would be this connection, too.
Now, when I open these books, I see not only historical tablatures, but also the people whose efforts brought them into my hands.
Sources: Wang Daqing, “The Thirty-Volume Qinqu Jicheng Transmits a Millennium of Our Nation’s Refined Music,” Guangming Daily, August 20, 2010; Fu Murong, “Zha Fuxi’s Contribution to Qinqu Jicheng,” Chinese Music, no. 1, 2011. The 1919 diary entry and editorial principle are cited through Fu’s article, which references Zha Fuxi Qin Studies: Selected Writings (1995), pp. 2 and 571. Photographs of the manuscript-copying account and the purchase record were supplied by William Xu.
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