The guzheng, a Chinese zither with movable bridges, fathered the koto
One legend says the guzheng was born from a squabble: two people fought over a 25-string zither and snapped it in two, one keeping 12 strings and the other 13. Whatever its origin, this bridged zither became perhaps China's most played instrument by the Tang dynasty and spread cousins across Japan, Korea, Mongolia and Vietnam.
A modern guzheng is about 1.6 metres long, usually strung with 21 strings over a resonant soundboard of Paulownia wood, and tuned to a major pentatonic scale. Each string rests on its own movable bridge, the key difference from the seven-string guqin. The highest strings lie nearest the player. The Japanese koto, the Korean gayageum and the Vietnamese dan tranh all descend from it.
The oldest specimen found so far had 13 strings and may date to the Warring States period, and the instrument rose to prominence under the Qin dynasty. Strings were once silk; in the Qing era they gave way to metal such as brass, and since the 1970s nylon-coated steel has made the instrument louder without spoiling its tone.
Traditionally the right hand plucks while the left presses the strings beyond the bridges to bend pitches and add vibrato, which is also how players reach the two notes the pentatonic tuning leaves out. A signature effect is a tremolo made by the right thumb rotating rapidly on one note. Regional schools sound distinct: Henan pieces are fiery, with heavy slides, while Shandong melodies rise and fall brightly. In the south, Hakka tunes are less ornamented than those of neighbouring Chaozhou, whose irregular beats alternate hard and soft strokes.
Since the 1950s composers have added left-hand harmony and counterpoint and blended northern and southern styles, and atonal works appeared from the 1980s. The zither has turned up in Gorillaz tracks, a Korgis pop hit from 1980, and Liu Cixin's science fiction, where a mission stringing nanomaterial across the Panama Canal is codenamed Guzheng. In 2021 Mindy Meng Wang released electronic collaborations with Tim Shiel.
Source: Guzheng
