A passion for stringed things that began with radio waves

Someone some time early last century seems to have decided that an instrument that for more than 2,000 years had been known as the qin needed some brand differentiation. Qin essentially refers to a stringed instrument, and for a long time that name was good enough for Chinese.

However, eventually to distinguish it from Western instruments such as the piano (in Chinese the gangqin), the harp (shuqin) and the violin (xiaotiqin), the qin became the guqin, that gu meaning old or traditional.

Now, you may think that the most important of the word quqin is qin, for ultimately it is the qin, along with the player, that has all the work to do in making music, but Ma Weiheng sees things a little differently.