Chinese Pentatonic Bliss
A few years ago I dreamed of owning an ancient Chinese instrument called a guqin.
The guqin, a seven-string Chinese musical instrument has been played since ancient times. It was traditionally favoured by scholars and literati as an instrument of great subtlety and refinement "a gentleman does not part with his qin or se without good reason,". It’s also associated with the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius and is sometimes referred to as "the instrument of the sages".
For weeks I could hear the sound of the guqin playing in my head, it was almost as if the sounds were distant memories, maybe of another time and another place and I felt like I had been there before - maybe a guqin had been apart of another life I’d had. I looked into buying one, contacted some professional players, who encouraged me, but it wasn’t as easy to get hold of as I had hoped, especially because I wasn’t too trusting of one coming from China. So I let it go.
Since childhood, I’ve had a strong connection to the East, and it’s ancient culture. In my room as a child, I had a statue of the Yellow Emperor sitting on his throne, various Chinese nature depictions of art around, an old porcelain doll someone had brought my mother from Hong Kong when she was little, I could go on… the culture of the East was infused onto my life. Little did I know as an adult many years later I would move to the East and live there for many years. I remember returning from many years living in Singapore and going shopping near our home in Bristol and having this horrible feeling of never having any connection, experience or friends from the East in my life again. Thankfully, quite the opposite happened and I’m also blessed to have friends from all over the world. I love this rich tapestry of life and how we all intertwine.
Tuning my harp to a Chinese pentatonic scale
Last November, 2021, I bought myself the harp - with money left for me from my dear dad and my journey into exploring my musical side has reawakened. I started learning to play it and have lessons. Here is an article I wrote about it - From the Harp — Carry Forth Tradition
Yesterday, in my harp lesson, my wonderful teacher Martin Solomon presented me with the right configuration to tune my harp into what I call the ‘Chinese key’ - and when I got home I had lots of fun with it. Here is a recording of me playing - improvising - on my harp in the ‘Chinese key’. It was so blissful, and I can now go off into my own happy little world and play the music I hear somewhere off in another dimension -
two little birds
I rescued this beautiful art work whilst I was mooching though a market in Beijing, China in 2008.
The artist was just about to screw it up because he wasn’t happy with it. I was! - so he gave it to me, and another one of some lilac, which sadly he had drawn a line through, but I still rescued it. He was a very sweet man. It is ink on very, very thin paper and I had it framed when we lived in Singapore.
It’s quite a large piece of work and needed an expert framer. Even the little wall hinges are beautiful, and the framer put a beautiful Chinese silk surround in the frame to highlight the painting.
We love it, it hangs on our dining room wall. I see the two little birds as me and my husband, Neil, I’m not sure who is who as it changes depending on what’s going on!)
