A Year Inside a Guqin

Before a guqin can sound, its maker must work through a long sequence of changes to wood and surface. The seven-string instrument has a spare outline, but that simplicity conceals many decisions. Hollowing, assembly, priming, sanding and lacquering all belong to the path towards an instrument that a musician can play. The eye sees a finished shape; the ear will eventually judge the work within it.

The musician Xu Wenjing passed on his qin-making knowledge to Choi Chang Sau in Hong Kong in the 1950s. Choi’s working background in a family instrument business met a teacher’s knowledge of the guqin. The lineage continued when Choi began taking apprentices in 1993; he and his students established the Choi Chang Sau Qin Making Society in 2011. The society records his life as 1933–2025.

That history places transmission in workshops and relationships, as well as in the completed instruments. A technique survives through someone showing another person how a piece of work should proceed.

A 2014 government feature described a qin as taking at least a year to make. It also told how Choi completed a project of twelve instruments associated with his teacher’s poems, inviting Jao Tsung-i to contribute calligraphy. Woodworking, lacquer, writing and music could thus meet on the same object.

The stages are more than a checklist. Each changes what the next stage can achieve, and a polished surface cannot substitute for a responsive instrument. The finished qin brings prolonged material work into the small, immediate action of a player setting a string in motion.