About Seven String Qin

The Most Ancient Living Instrument

The guqin is over three thousand years old. Seven strings, stretched across a body of aged wood, held in place by nothing but silk and lacquer. It is one of the oldest instruments still played in the world today — and one of the least known outside of China.

A Work of Art. A Thousand-Year Object.

The guqin is a work of art. Its distinctive form and the ancient technique of raw lacquer finishing allow a well-made qin to survive for a thousand years. In classical Chinese culture, the four arts of the scholar — qin, chess, calligraphy, and painting — were considered essential to a cultivated life. To hang a qin in one's study was a mark of refinement, a quiet statement about the quality of one's inner world.

Not a Performance. A Conversation.

The guqin was never meant for the stage. Its voice is too intimate — too honest — for a concert hall. Without amplification, only the person sitting closest can hear it fully. This is not a flaw. It is the point.

To play the guqin is not to perform. It is to think — in a language made of sound. When the room is quiet and your fingers find the strings, what comes out is not music for an audience. It is the movement of your own mind, made audible only to yourself.

Our Mission

Seven String Qin exists to carry this culture across languages — to bring the inner world of the guqin to thoughtful people in the English-speaking world.

We are not a music store. We do not sell instruments the way others sell instruments. We sell the beginning of a three-thousand-year conversation. Every qin that leaves our hands carries with it a lineage, a philosophy, and a way of being in the world that has no equivalent in the West.

The Tradition Behind Us

Our instruments trace their lineage to the Guangling School — one of the great classical traditions of guqin music, rooted in Yangzhou and carried forward through generations of master players. Our teacher's teacher was Mei Yueqiang, the tenth-generation master of the Jinling lineage and the eleventh of the Guangling, keeper of the Yiyunzhai Qin Compendium. His teacher was Liu Shaochun, one of the most revered Guangling players of the twentieth century. They slept in the same room for three years. That is how this music was passed down — not through textbooks, but through proximity, devotion, and time.

This is the tradition behind every qin we offer.

William Xu

My name is William Xu. I came to the guqin not as a musician, but as someone who could not stop thinking about what it meant — what it said about silence, about culture, about the kind of inner life that a civilization chooses to cultivate.

I built Seven String Qin because I believe there are people in the English-speaking world who are ready for this instrument. Not beginners looking for a hobby. Thoughtful people — readers, thinkers, those who have always felt that something essential was missing from the musical traditions they inherited.

If that is you, you are in the right place.

A Promise for Life

Seven String Qin watches over every qin entrusted to you — for life. A qin is not merely an instrument; it is the passage of a culture, from Seven String Qin to your hands. Whatever befalls it, we are here to help it heal.

A qin that has lived long enough will carry its scars. Cracks, chips, the marks of a fall — these are not the end. Tell William. Bring it back to Seven String Qin, and we will give it another life. The craft that built it can always restore it.