Guqin and Tail-Burnt Guqin

Among the Four Great Guqin in Chinese music history, the one named Tail-Burnt has its interesting legend.

Cai Yi, an outstanding historian and musician in the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. - 220 A.D.), once found that a cook was using a piece of paulownia wood, the first-class material to make Guqin, to cook his meal. To everyone's surprise, Cai dragged the wood out of the fire with his bare hands. After explaining the function of paulownia wood to the cook, Cai happily took the wood home and made a refined Guqin. Because the wood was burnt at its part of tail, it was later named Tail-Burnt Guqin.

Guqin is also called seven-stringed Qin. The body is a long and narrow sound box made of wood. It is 130cm long, 20cm wide, and 5cm thick. The surface is generally made of paulownia wood or China fir, and has seven strings stretched along it. On the edges are 13 inlaid jade markers. Catalpa wood is used for the base, and there are two holes, one big and one small (called the "phoenix pool" and "dragon pond", respectively) to emit the sound. The fingering techniques are known as recital, rubbing, plucking, concentration, floating notes and harmonious notes (same measure, five measure and octave). The instrument is rich in tone color, with airy, floating notes, and simple and solid scattered notes.