Our Story

Language opens the door.
Music opens the world.

My mission is not simply to teach the guqin.
It is to introduce the guqin to the English-speaking world.

A student may come to learn. Or they may come to listen. Or simply to place a guqin in their study — to live alongside its beauty, its silence, its presence.

However they arrive, they are entering a world.

Just as the violin and the flute once walked into China and became part of Chinese musical life, the guqin can walk into the Western world — not as a foreign curiosity, but as something that belongs.

Music is not a language. It is something deeper. A student may need English to learn the names of the strings, the posture, the fingering. But when they begin to play Liangxiao Yin, or Flowing Water, words gradually fall away.

What guides them from that point is the ear. The heart. And time.

You do not need to speak Chinese to love this music. You do not need to know Chinese history to feel something when you hear Flowing Water for the first time.

You only need to listen.

Language is where learning begins.
Music is where language ends — and something else begins.

There is one more thing I believe deeply.

The guqin is not only music. It carries within it an entire civilization — its philosophy, its aesthetics, the way of life of the Chinese literati.

A student who hears Flowing Water for the first time may feel something without knowing the story of Boya and Ziqi. That feeling is real. It is enough to begin.

And if, one day, they wish to go further — to learn the history, to understand the culture, to read about the scholars who played this instrument for two thousand years — that curiosity will arise naturally, from love, not from obligation.

Culture is not a barrier. It is a landscape you discover as you travel deeper.

There have been great Westerners who walked the long road: they learned Chinese, studied sinology, read the classical texts — and arrived at the guqin after years of dedication. Robert Hans van Gulik. Cecilia Lindqvist. Kenneth DeWoskin. Their paths were extraordinary, and worthy of deep respect.

But not everyone can walk that road. And they should not have to.

My path is different. I am not a scholar of languages. My English is imperfect. And yet, with the tools available today — translation software, AI, the open connections of the internet — I have been able to build this store, obtain certifications, and reach people I could never have reached before.

This is the proof.

Language should not be a barrier. And we have arrived at a moment in history when that barrier is finally beginning to fall.

Technology will not replace culture. But it can remove the walls that keep people away from it.

The guqin does not need to change. Its sound, its technique, its history, its beauty — all of this remains exactly as it has always been.

What changes is the path to reach it.

In the past, you had to cross the barrier of language before you could approach the guqin.

Today, you can hear the guqin first. You can love it first. And then, if you wish, walk deeper into the world it comes from.

That is what Seven String Qin is here for.

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.

On November 7, 2003, UNESCO proclaimed the guqin and its music a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity — part of the second group of 28 traditions recognized worldwide. In 2008, it was formally inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (Item No. 00061). This recognition is not an honor given lightly. It is a rescue — a declaration that something of irreplaceable value to all of humanity was at risk of being lost.

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.

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.

— William Xu, Founder, Seven String Qin