31^st July 2006

This, the 21^st meeting of the London Youlan Qin Society, was held during the Chinese Music Summer School at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Introduction

We were honoured to welcome qin master Gong Yi from Shanghai, China, who was teaching the qin during the Summer School.

Programme

After a short welcome speech by Cheng Yu, Gong Yi gave a talk about developments in qin music in mainland China. There was also a question and answer session. Christopher Evans interpreted for both of these sessions. Between them, the following music was played:

Kongzi Du Yi 孔子读易 (Confucius Reads the Book of Changes), played by Charlie Huang.
Yi Guren 忆故人 remembering an Old Friend) played by Chen Jinwei.
Yi Guren 忆故人 (Remembering an Old Friend) played by Zhao Xiaomei.
Yu Qiao Wen Da 渔樵问答 (Dialogue of the Fisherman and the Woodcutter), played by Guan Zhenning.
Pu'an Zhou 普庵咒 (Incantation of Pu'an), played by Guan Zhenning.
Shen Ren Chang 神人畅 (Joy of Gods and Men), played by Christopher Evans. This usual English translation is given here, but in Christopher's opinion the Chinese probably means something like "spiritual and earthly pleasures".
Xiang Jiang Yuan 湘江怨 played and sung by Wang Tingting. The piece is associated with the following story. Emperor Shun died while visiting the south of China and was buried in Hunan Province. He had two queens, who were sisters. The tears they cried on hearing the news of their husband's death fell onto a local species of bamboo and stained the bamboo with dot-like marks. This species of bamboo with spotted leaves is referred to in Hunan province as "Xiang Fei" bamboo. The piece has the alternative title "Xiang Fei Yuan" (The Lament of the Xiang Princesses), because Xiang is the abbreviated name for Hunan Province.
Jiu Kuang 酒狂 (Drunken Ecstasy), played and sung by Wang Tingting. This is about a man who was said to be a wise sage in the Jin Dynasty more than 1000 years ago, who was dissatisfied with the rule of the emperor of the time and pretended to be a drunkard.
Shishang Liu Quan 石上流泉 (A Spring Flowing over Stones), played by Julian Joseph.
Jiu Kuang 酒狂 (Drunken Ecstasy), played by Gong Yi.
Da Hujia 大胡笳 (Greater Nomad Reedpipe), played by Gong Yi. The story of an ancient princess (Cai Wenji) who was sent to a far off land and then returned to her own country but had to leave her children behind.
Dongting Qiu Si 洞庭秋思 (Autumn Thoughts at Lake Dongting), played by Dan Nung Ing. Dan Nung learned it from Gong Yi in London three years ago. Since then he has been continuously experimenting with the rhythm.

Developments in Qin Music in Mainland China over the Past Few Years

by Gong Yi, interpretation by Christopher Evans

Over the past few years in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and other cities in China have seen a great deal of development in qin music. I'll talk about the surface phenomena first. Newspaper reports say that in

Beijing alone there are 29 schools specialising in teaching qin. In Shanghai there are 5 or 6 similar organisations which aim at popularising qin music. In Kunming there are three qin schools on one street alone. There is one person who spends half of his week in Tianjin; the other half of the week he spends in Beijing. He teaches qin in both places. There is one person, a Mr Mao, who teaches in Nanjing, Beijing, Suzhou and Shanghai. So we pull his leg and ask him how anyone can have the energy to do so much! There are two guqin societies at Nanjing University. There is one at Beijing University, but it has 400 or 500 members who are enthusiastic about qin. In the foreign languages schools in Beijing there are 40-50 people who want to learn the qin. Not long ago I received a letter inviting me to be the guqin consultant at a university in Guangdong. I had never even heard of the university, let alone the society. There is a national university in Hefei, the Chinese University of Science an Technology, where I have given three lectures. The first was for the leadership, the second for senior staff, the third for students. Since these three lectures, guqin music has become much more popular in Hefei and there are now concerts and public demonstrations. There is now one guqin school in Shanghai which has 600-700 students. Small guqin concerts can be heard at more or less any time. Theree are places in Shanghai where they opened a "guqin room"; on the door they put "the owner is a student of Gong Yi". Suddenly everything looks wonderful. That's one aspect.

The other aspect is that most of these organisations are not officially run, they are run by the ordinary people themselves. One particular organisation I am involved with has company directors, university staff and students, people from a wide range of occupations. In recent years there have probably been 300 or 400 people coming and going in all these societies. Of course there are some who only stay two or three months and then give it up, but there are others who have been studying for 4 or 5 years or more. Normally the class size is 6 or 7. Starting from not knowing anything at all, after 3 or 4 years they can play some very complex pieces like Xiao Xiang Shui Yun, Dao Yi, Liu Shui and Guangling San. Then they form their own social groupings. These are all ways in which the guqin is becoming more popular in society, and much better known. The main reason is the changes in cultural values in society which are making the guqin more palatable. This shows that no particular aspect of society can be taken in isolation; society's value is as a whole. At the same time, the increase in the number of people who want to learn the guqin has a positive effect: the more people study it, the more people will want to study it. This can be seen in the number of concerts, the number of records, the number of publications, and also the number of qins being made.

Speaking of publications, you can find guqin CDs everywhere. So we find a new atmosphere among the the manufacturers of qin in say Yangzhou, Beijing or Chengdu. I often hear that in some particular city, one particular maker's qin costs RMB 150 000 (£10 000). Someone else's may cost RMB 100 000 (£7 000). This [pointing to the qin he had brought to the summer School] was made by Wang Peng in Beijing and was priced quite low at only RMB 70 000 (ca. £5000). But when you think about it, it's only two pieces of wood glued together - and the wood isn't all that valuable. So people begin to wonder if it's just a high price for something that's not really worth anything. But in fact this phenomenon doesn't really exist: if I were willing to sell this qin, maybe 5 or 6 people would bid for it. In my own school there may be 20 people who have qins made by Mr Wang at RMB 20 000 - 30 000 (£1500 - 2000). In Beijing, I once saw a man who bought three qins made by He Mingwei at RMB 60 000 each. [Interpreter's note: This is probably 20 years average income in China per qin.] All the very famous makers' prices have gone up, so now all the less famous makers prices have also gone up and they are asking RMB 20 000, 30 000, 40 000.

Now the problem we face is that as the demand for teachers grows, we find we don't have enough teachers. My students are teaching, my students' students are teaching, and some of them can't really play very well, but they are still teaching. So there is now a degree of opposition. I see no reason to criticise these people or try to stop them, because at this level of society's civilisation or culture, there is no way to stop them. We find that if two societies are started at roughly the same time, one will thrive and the other will just die out. In a few years, the state of the guqin will be much more stable, healthy and solid. The reasons are in the first place connected with the fact that the guqin is now part of the world's intangible heritage. The declaration of the guqin as a part of the world's intangible heritage in October 2003 has been a factor in the promotion of Chinese culture within China. Also in the last few years there has been quite a change in cultural attitudes: the "wilder" ends of culture are being opposed now, and people are looking for a more civilised and cultural approach.

This is my view of how the qin has developed in recent years.

Q & A session

Q: Music is personal, so sometimes the artists themselves lift up/come to another level of performance and understanding of the music. It is also combined with their personal experience, emotionally and (especially in China) politically, as well as in general life. I would like to ask Professor Gong if this applies to him.

Gong Yi: The process by which I learned the qin was very simple: when I was at middle school I heard a concert and I liked it, so after a bit of study I was admitted to the middle school attached to the Shanghai Conservatory. When I graduated from the middle school I went straight into the conservatory to do the honours degree there. When I finished that I went straight to work and have been playing ever since. Really, learning music is a little like being alive: when you are a child you don't really know or understand anything, but as you get older, you understand more, and more, and more, and eventually you understand quite a lot. But unfortunately that is fairly near the end of things. With music, you start off learning something perhaps fairly simple, then you learn more and more different instruments, or perhaps learn about them. The more you learn about music, including operas, pingtan [Interpreter's note: pingtan is a a form of narrative song] the more you learn about the cultural background of music, the greater your understanding of music. Some people have asked what I did during the Cultural Revolution, was I allowed to play the qin. In fact I played two qin: the first was "aiqin[g]" [Interpreter's note: 'aiqin' ('love') is pronounced 'aiqing' in Gong Yi's home area near Nanjing]; the second qin was this one. The key is that you must never take life too seriously - take things as they come. That way you don't have to worry about other things, you can get on with your life quietly, practice quietly. Sometimes journalists come to me and ask me about my life, all the high points and low points. But really it's a very simple life, and they go away disappointed. I'm just an ordinary person.

Q: I'm not disappointed. That's a chan [zen] philosophy.

Gong Yi: So am I a Buddhist or a Daoist or whatever? If you want to call me a Buddhist call me a Buddhist; if you want to call me a Daoist call me a Daoist, but in reality I'm just me. Objective things don't really affect me very much. So why worry about the Cultural Revolution?

Q: Can you compare the traditional way of learning the guqin with the conservatory way.

Gong Yi: This is something I have heard far too often. People sometimes say that he is of the conservatory trained school and others are from the traditional school. The so-called traditional way of learning the qin is to have teacher and student on opposite sides of the table, each with a qin in front of them. The teacher would demonstrate something and the pupil would copy it. This is not a particularly good way of learning, because it is a product of a feudalistic attitude. This kind of education comes from a feudal society where you might have a teacher with 3 or 4 students, all from the local area. But then trying to learn foreign ways of teaching - people came back from Japan or America and set up schools on a Japanese or American model. This is a necessary consequence of development in society. If I am a teacher and you have to copy what I do, this is going to be a very slow process. Today I wouldn't do that. I would give you a tablature or a score and tell you to learn it and practice it for 2 or 3 days. At the end of that period we would talk again. This is a much quicker way of teaching that doing it phrase by phrase. Scientific education has four characteristics. Teaching you the main points and then helping you to understand any difficulties. So practicing can't be done in the classroom - it has to be done at home. It is the same with the guqin as with the guzheng - you have to learn a great many things. In many aspect of it - musical culture - you have to learn folk songs and different instruments, musical history, foreign music, even popular music, all have to be learned, understood, analysed. Then they come together as part of your own musical capacity.


Zhao Xiaomei playing Yi Guren	Gong Yi playing Da Hujia	Christopher Evans playing Shen Ren Chang

31st July 2006

Introduction

Programme

Developments in Qin Music in Mainland China over the Past Few Years

Q & A session

31^st July 2006