Liaoning Provincial Museum is the first museum established after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. It currently holds a collection of nearly 120,000 cultural relics, including tens of thousands of rare treasures. The “Jiu Xiao Huan Pei” qin (meaning “celestial harmonies”) is one of the rare treasures in this museum. The “Resonating Melodies” Guqin Culture Exhibition is currently taking place at Liaoning Provincial Museum, and “Jiu Xiao Huan Pei” is stunningly displayed.
On the first stop of Treasure Hunt Across Liaoning, Anna from Russia went to Liaoning Provincial Museum to appreciate the beauty of the guqin, listen to its elegant melody, and feel its unique connotation.
Dressed in a light-colored Hanfu (the traditional styles of clothing worn by the Han Chinese), Anna, as a cultural ambassador for the dissemination of guqin culture, stepped into Liaoning Provincial Museum to search for the national treasure “Jiu Xiao Huan Pei”. According to the pictures, she eventually found the 1267-year-old Tang Dynasty guqin. This guqin is made of straight-grained Chinese parasol tree wood, with the four Chinese characters (Jiu Xiao Huan Pei) engraved on the bottom. Its rounded and unadorned shape exudes a sense of time-honored simplicity, brimming with the vicissitudes of history.
As the oldest plucked instrument in China, the earliest surviving guqin dates back to the Tang Dynasty, and the guqin collected in Liaoning Provincial Museum is from the mid-Tang period. Actually, “Jiu Xiao Huan Pei” is not the name of this particular guqin, but the general name for this kind of qin. There are only 4 guqins named “Jiu Xiao Huan Pei” left in the world. “Jiu Xiao Huan Pei” means that the sound of these qins is incredibly euphonious, just like the tinkling of jade pendants adorning celestial fairies, resonating through the highest heaven.
The guqin is more than a musical instrument. It embodies the thinking of the Chinese classical philosophy, reflecting the basic Chinese view of nature and heaven and earth. The length of this guqin is 3 chi, 6 cun and 5 fen (in ancient Chinese measurement), representing the 365 days of the year. The guqin has 13 “hui” that are important scale notes, representing the 12 months of the year plus a leap month in the Chinese lunar calendar.
During this treasure-hunting journey, Anna developed a desire to learn to play the guqin. In the garden of Liaoning Provincial Museum, the guqin teacher Yi Dan imparted the basic techniques of guqin playing to Anna. As she gently plucked the strings, the melodious sounds flowed through her fingertips, immersing her in the profound aesthetic mood and rich historical ambiance. Playing the guqin is as if we had a conversation with the ancient Chinese beyond time and space. Anna hopes to learn and spread the Chinese guqin culture, enabling more people to appreciate the everlasting charm of Chinese civilization.
