Soulful tunes of an antique land

In the Tang Dynasty, a Lei family in Sichuan was known for making guqin masterpieces, and Lei Wei was the most famous in the family.

Legend has it that Lei Wei would run to the mountains and ancient forests on snowy days when he was drunk.

As the north wind howled and shook the trees, he listened to the resonant sound of the branches — a poetic approach to selecting good materials for guqin production.

The guqin is 124.8 cm long with three kinds of timbres: overtones, press tones and scattered tones, symbolizing the harmony of heaven, earth and man.

According to Tang Fei, head of the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Heritage Administration, this is its first homecoming to its birthplace of Sichuan.

Rare artifacts which captivate visitors to the special exhibition abound, including a wooden pipa (lute) in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907-960) period, from the Yangzhou Museum in East China's Jiangsu province, and a fresco, from the Shaanxi Archaeology Museum, which shows ancient women musicians playing konghou (an ancient plucked, stringed instrument).

There are a bronze chime bell, made in the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and collected in Hebei Museum in North China's Hebei province, and a brick depicting musicians which is from the Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, in Gansu province.

"All of them are being shown in Sichuan for the first time," says Wang Li, an information officer in the Chengdu Museum.

The pipa is the only wood-carved musical instrument unearthed in the archaeological history of China, according to the Yangzhou Museum.