Three thousand years of unparalleled cultural heritage... The "Beautiful and Beautiful" Guqin Culture Exhibition Appears at the East Hall of the Picture

2023 marks the 20th anniversary of Guqin's inclusion in the World Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Recently, a "nice and beautiful" Guqin culture exhibition opened on the 7th floor of the East Building of the Shanghai Library. At the opening ceremony of the "Looking at the SH à ng Guqin - Echoes of Three Thousand Years" Guqin Culture Exhibition and the launch ceremony of the new book "Traditional Chinese Guqin Production Art", the reprinted and original versions of five precious Guqin pieces were publicly presented to readers, playing back the timeless legacy of three thousand years.

The historical prototypes of the famous ancient qin from the Tang Dynasty, the Southern Song Dynasty, and the late Ming Dynasty, known as the "Nine Heavens Huanpei", are the ancient qin from the Forbidden City that has been passed down for generations. They are usually kept in seclusion and rarely seen by most audiences. In this exhibition, viewers can achieve a close encounter with the famous qin from the Forbidden City through the perfect 1:1 replication technique of the qin maker. Not only can they see the graceful posture of the famous qin, but they can also appreciate the precious inscriptions behind each qin. In addition, there is a very special nine stringed qin, which is a legendary story that solves the mystery of the strings through the "Listening to the Qin Picture".

The producers of these guqin are one of the curators of this exhibition, Yang Zhijian. As a representative inheritor of the Shanghai Intangible Cultural Heritage Project "Guqin Shaping Technique" and also a recipient of the title of "Shanghai Craftsman", Yang Zhijian has devoted himself to researching and restoring the production of world-renowned qin such as "Jiuxiao Huanpei" and "Da Sheng Yiyin" with the spirit of craftsmanship. In the production of Guqin, he has achieved a harmonious unity of "acoustics, aesthetics, materials science, and qin science", and has applied for more than 20 patents related to Guqin production, continuously bringing new vitality to the development of Guqin art.

In 2017, Yang Zhijian was awarded the title of "Shanghai Craftsman". The Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions awarded him the first "Shanghai Craftsman Innovation Studio" to settle in Tangzhen, Pudong, providing a good place for traditional culture enthusiasts and guqin enthusiasts in Shanghai to learn about the millennium old guqin art.

The beauty of Guqin: good quality, good chopping, skillful fingers, and upright heart. The "Zhuo Qin" section in the exhibition is also particularly exciting, based on the visual presentation of Yang Zhijian's new book "Traditional Chinese Guqin Production Art" published by Guangxi Normal University Press. "Zhuo Qin" is an art that blends and coexists with time and nature. It is tightly intertwined with specific natural attributes such as wood, air, temperature, and humidity, ultimately giving birth to a perfect ancient qin and its heavenly sound. In this exhibition hall, visitors can see the "qin wall" of the guqin - by disassembling and putting each part of the guqin on the wall, they can see the "muscles" and "bones" of the guqin, as well as the "wrinkles" hidden in the wood. In the exhibition cabinet, you can see the various materials and tools used for Zhuo Qin, such as human hair. In the steps of plucking a guqin, you can see the countless hardships that a guqin must go through from material selection to formation, and then listen to the heavenly sounds emanating from this long body.

The literati are elegant and good, asking with a qin. The most prominent feature of this Guqin exhibition in terms of visual style is that the "literati temperament" of the Guqin is permeated through each exhibition wall, the placement of each exhibit, and even the angle of lighting and the position of furniture. Therefore, from the moment the audience enters this field, it feels as if they are immersed in the tranquil and distant Chinese landscape painting.

The dissemination and promotion of the Guqin among the people are inseparable from the popularization of woodblock printing. Music popular among the literati class was reprinted and published due to innovative notation methods such as subtractive character notation. In conjunction with the Guqin Art Exhibition, the 7th floor of the East Hall of the Shanghai Library will also launch a themed literature exhibition titled "Searching for Companions with One Poem and One Song", which will collect various classic Guqin literature that has been passed down in the collection and recent works on Guqin that have been sorted, researched, and photocopied and published. The exhibition will showcase to readers the history, scores, theories, biographies of the qin players, techniques of chopping the qin, as well as calligraphy, poetry, paintings, and other cultural books related to the Guqin. Rich books on the theme of guqin will take you on a journey of tranquility and deliciousness amidst the melodious sound of the qin, searching for like-minded partners with each song.

The guqin is not ancient, as long as there is a generation of performers and producers who inherit and develop it, and generations of "friends" who express themselves through the guqin, the guqin will always be young. Zhao Cong, the head of the Central Ethnic Orchestra and deputy secretary of the Party Committee, said, "As protectors and inheritors of the art of guqin, we adhere to creative transformation and innovative development, and use our hearts and emotions to create music works for the new era. We enrich the contemporary expression and artistic presentation of excellent traditional culture, allowing guqin art to continuously create new cultures belonging to our era in the intersection of tradition and modernity, and promoting the modern civilization of the Chinese nation to shine with new brilliance."

Text: Cao Zhiguang

Official WeChat from Pudong