What is Guzheng

The guzheng, plucked stringed instrument, is a zheng instrument among the traditional instruments of the Han Chinese people, and belongs to a kind of plucked instrument.

The guzheng, a plucked stringed instrument, also known as the Han zheng and Qin zheng, is an ancient ethnic musical instrument of the Han nationality, popular throughout China. After thousands of years of development, it has mainly formed four major schools: Hakka zheng, Chaozhou zheng, Shandong zheng and Henan zheng.

It is commonly used for solo performance, repertoire, instrumental ensemble, and accompaniment of songs, dances, operas, and tunes. Because of its wide range, beautiful sound, rich playing skills and strong expressive power, it is known as the "king of music", also known as the "Oriental piano", and is one of China's unique and important national musical instruments.

The structure of guzheng consists of panel, goose pillar, strings, front yakeshan, string pegs, tuning box, foot, back yakeshan, side plate, sound outlet, bottom plate, stringing hole. The shape is a rectangular wooden box, the string holder "zheng column" (i.e. goose column) can be moved freely, one string, one tone, according to the pentatonic scale arrangement.

The uniform specification of guzheng is 1.63 meters and 21 strings. Most of the panels of guzheng are made of tung wood from Lankao, Henan Province, and the frame is white pine, and the head, tail, and side panels around the guzheng are made of mahogany, old mahogany (Burmese sour branch), Jinshi nanmu, zitan, and other valuable woods, and the sound quality of the guzheng depends on the panels and strings, and the peripheral materials are slightly improving the sound of the guzheng, which is better with the old mahogany, zitan, and Jinshi nanmu.

Guzheng conservation methods:

1, in the humid weather environment, must pay attention to the guzheng stored in a dry and ventilated location, when not in use can be put in the bag desiccant and other moisture-absorbing items and then will be packaged to store the guzheng.

2, in excessively dry weather conditions, the koto's string holes and even the bottom plate, there will be some cracks, which must be protected as early as possible, you can use some appropriate instrument moisturizing cream evenly coated in the cracks around, in order to prevent cracks from expanding.

3, be sure not to let the koto in the sun for a long time, or the panel damage is very big.

4, don't let the panel get wet, and be sure to take protective measures when carrying it on rainy days.