Gu Zheng


cathy posted a querie prompted by the busker in the city who plays his chinese stringed instrument almost daily for the passerbys. pop music and karaoke aside, did i see much traditional music while i was in China.

the answer is yes and no. i did see some traditional music occasionally, but no it wasnt very often, and it wasnt very varied. the instrument i saw (and sought out) the most was the giant, stringed instrument, the gu zheng, which i fell in love with.


at one of the palaces, in fact i think it was the summer palace in beijing i saw a little orchestra performing for an hour or so, and that was pretty cool. i didnt stay to watch the whole show but i saw a bit.


traditional music in china is often used more for background music, for example in teahouse style settings, to provide a nice atmosphere for chatting and relaxing etc.

and yeh, probably the first exposure i had to the guzheng was in a teahouse the uni loved taking us to at the end of any sort of 'outing' we had. it was a really cool teahouse by the way, but looked quite expensive! i dont think i could've gone there if the uni wasn't taking us all the time.


oh, and i think there was a russian girl who worked there! it seemed quite cool, and while the place looked really good, i dont think the pay is all that great. im assuming that girl a) has an interest in chinese traditions and b) couldnt work as an english teacher. sensibly she seemed to be avoiding the third option usually available to the russian girls, working as dancers or waitresses who have to play dice games and entertain the customers in the nightclubs. we almost got into that, im more than glad that it fell through though!!

back to music. so yes, in this cool teahouse they always had teapouring demonstrations for us, with some random host blabbing into a microphone commentating the whole thing, while some girl prepared and poured tea (spilling a lot, always, which reassured me about my own ability of spilling tea) into many little cups, while the man on her other side plucked and strummed the guzheng for atmosphere.


i'd heard about and seen photos of the guzheng before i'd first heard it played, 'cause my exchange sister's older cousin (therefore my 'older sister') mentioned that she had started learning it about 3 years ago. i told her she has to teach me some basics one day.

photos, i stumbled upon amongst hunting for images of the forms of traditional dress in the ancient dynasties.
i love gu zhuang (ancient clothes), they're supposedly where japanese kimono stemmed from.
and finally i heard it, in the teahouse, and at a few other orchestral performances throughout the year.


at another of the palaces they had a hall dedicated to musical instruments, it had a cool name, but i've forgotten it. most likely something about heaven and music in harmony or something similar.

i was with my family at this time, so we browsed through and cameron admired all the types of chinese drums.



one weekend though, katrina's (who i tutored) mum took me inter-city to see their homecity and take me to a mountain and see her school (she was the principal of the school), and she decided to pick out some students who were delegated the task of performing for my pleasure. so i ended up having a boy who i cant even remember his name lugging a guzheng into the principal's office one evening and then a little concert/ recital was put on, in honour of me. haha.

he was really good! i was torn between just listening and watching how fast his fingers flew across the strings (much the way i watch cathy's fingers on the piano!) and trying to record movie clips on my camera.



most annoyingly the other people in the room, a few teachers, the boy's mum and friend were all happily carrying on their conversations over the top of his music. i didnt understand it at the time, and thought it was quite rude, especially as they were making him perform, and if he stopped they'd encourage him to play some more, but i've realised by now that that's just part of the way china is. they dont have a 'quiet audience sort of etiquette'.


i'll try and post a movie clip, seeing as i've just noticed we can now.
ohh, u will have to scroll up to the top and turn off the music first. (if u haven't already haha!)

one of my uni teachers recently spoke a bit about peking opera and even he mentioned how part of the reason the opera is so loud, and the voices so shrill is because it's designed to be done over the top of a talking crowd, also originally in an outdoor sort of setting. i laughed when he imitated how amongst the chatting of the audience, occasionally one guy would take note of a particular part in the opera and therefore leap out of his seat, to clap a few times and shout out 'good! good!'.

i laughed 'cause lou and i had been invited to see a student performed play at the uni sometime mid last year and during the thankyou speeches and like a raffle ticket announcement or something similar before hand there was this man in fornt of us who kept doing exactly that! leaping out of his seat to boom out 'good! good!' energetically and approvingly, at the most uncalled for times....i mean, there was no performance happening, it was merely a very uneventful introductory speech. and then to our utmost surprise, as soon as the play actually started commencing he got up and left!!


but yeh, so i felt sorry for this poor boy being dragged out in the evening to put on a show for a random foreign girl, for no reason other than that she was foreign and had come to see him perform like an animal in a zoo, meanwhile his performance seemingly being ignored. perhaps to him it's all very quite normal but i was quite disappointed with the other 'audience' members.

i was quizzed on one of my favourite pop songs and hence he was also forced to play 'superstar' by s.h.e haha! i thought it sounded quite cool hehe. i like the end of this movie, haha it's cute.
he says 'it's too embarrassing!!'

and finally i got to get up close and personal with the guzheng, and try playing it for fun a few times. although i wasnt doing anything in particular it still sounded nice. everyone laughed that instead of taping my fingers up (with like guitar pick type things?) like a real guzheng musician i was just using my own talon like manicured fingernails. haha



so yes, i have decided it is one of my life-goals to one day learn to play the guzheng, though i imagine they will be damn expensive and seemingly a china-only instrument as i've got no idea how transporting one to australia would go.

but yes, they are very cool!

ohh, and i bought a bamboo flute too, when i was first hanging out with leo, 'cause i was sick of listening to one of the korean girls in the dorm murdering her violin, and i regretted not having brought my flute. the guy in the music shop kind of gave a demo on the flute and it was cool...but it took me like a week before i could get a sound out of it. it was kind of too frustrating, so the novelty wore off quick.


in the end the flute i bought was a bit dodgy, 'cause i found two cracks in the bamboo, one of which i sticky taped and unsurprisingly it was much easier to play afterwards! the main problem though, was the flute was a different key to a usual silver flute, and so the fingers for each note where up the creek and i couldnt work it out, also, it depends on fingers covering holes, much harder than a key on a flute covering the hole so yeh, all in all it was a little too perplexing for me.

i meant to bring the flute home, and painstakingly go through and chart each note and fingering pattern next to the notes of my silver flute, so i can play it, but with packing luggage problems it ended up being in with all the stuff i left behind.
so, i guess i just have to bring it home this time then, dont i. ^_^