Guqin Art was included in UNESCO’s representative list of human oral and intangible cultural heritage in 2003. It has a verifiable history is three thousand years old.
Qin, chess, calligraphy and painting, was the four skills that ancient Chinese literati were proud of, also they are four arts. Guqin performance is the oldest, highest-level art in Chinese history. It is with the most national spirit, aesthetic taste and traditional art characteristics among all forms of instrumental music performance.
Guqin is generally used as a solo of pure instrumental music, but also it has the form of “qin songs” that gives consideration to both singing and playing as well as playing with xiao, xun and other instruments. It has a wide range of themes and rich contents, expressing separation, pain, love, joy, sadness and anger, as well as historical stories, poetic and pictorial splendor, and natural scenery, etc.. Through the processing and creation of generations of qin people, they are constantly improved and are a treasure house of music.
Guqin is also called “qin”, “seven-stringed qin” and so on. There are large, medium, small varieties of it, and most are medium. It is made according to the body shape of the phoenix at the earliest, and its whole body corresponds to the body of the phoenix. It has head, neck, shoulders, waist, tail and feet. It is painted all over, mainly black, also there are red and brown ones.
It has three kinds of tone colors: overtone, loose tone and press tone, generally it is set by pentatonic scale. In the modern model, the steel wire core is wrapped around the nylon string, thus the volume increases and the residual sound lengthens, the friction noise caused by the string movement finger reduces. Guqin has a small volume and unique tone. Being elegant and small in scope, it is the most outstanding art heritage in Chinese cultural and historical creation.
