1,000 people to play guzheng at National Indoor Stadium during music festival

The first Beijing Guzheng International Music Festival, which will last for six days, will open on July 26. One thousand guzheng performers from around China and countries like Germany, South Korea, Singapore and Canada will perform famous guzheng tunes, such as “A fishing boat song at dusk” and “Fighting against typhoons,” at the National Indoor Stadium.

The music festival is jointly sponsored by Beijing Municipal Commission of Ethnic Affairs and Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture, and is organized by Beijing national cultural exchange center. It is one of the cultural events organized by Beijing to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, as well as the city’s key national cultural creative industry project. Reporters learned that it is the largest guzheng event in history in terms of the number of participants, scale and comprehensiveness. It will feature 11 performances including Wang Zhongshan’s guzheng forum and concert, a concert featuring Ji Wei and her students, the Xie Tianxiao guzheng and rock’n’roll concert, and a concert for national young award-winning guzheng performers.

The guzheng world’s new players, works and types of the instrument, including a multiple-string guzheng and one giant guzheng played by numerous people, will be showcased at the festival. Music forums and competitions about the guzheng will be launched. As of now, more than 1,200 guzheng players, professors and composers from Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, the US and other nations and regions have registered to participate in the festival. Twenty percent of the Chinese guzheng players who have signed up for the event are from ethnic minorities.

Renowned guzheng master Wang Zhongshan said that the guzheng is an ancient musical instrument with a history of 3,000 years. China now has around 3 million guzheng players, and there are 500,000 players in Hong Kong alone. The number of people taking part in guzheng exams is only second to the piano, far surpassing numerous Western musical instruments.

Rock’n’roll star Xie Tianxiao is full of appreciation for the guzheng. “The guzheng has had close relations with rock’n’roll. Just because China’s rock’n’roll music contains guzheng elements, it is dubbed ‘Chinese rock’n’roll’ by its foreign counterparts. Many foreign musicians believe that the guzheng has replaced the guitar in Chinese rock’n’roll. It helps us create our own music that stands out among the numerous types of music in the world,” he said.

Translated by LOTO