During my last trip to Beijing I was walking the back streets of the city in search of something more authentic than Chinese students wanting me to buy their artwork. Walking the twisted lane ways I ran into a gentleman playing this plucking instrument which looked like an oversize bass but sounded a little like a Banjo. With my wee bit of Chinese I conversed with him a little and he showed me inside his house and was keen to show off the instruments he could play. From what I could understand from the conversation his Baba (father) was a performer and he learnt the ways of the musical force from an early age.
After the trip I did a bit of Googling and found out the instrument is called a Sanxian(三弦). I won’t bore you with the details on this blog because that’s what Wikipedia is for.
So, without further ado, here is the first of 3 videos I took with my point and shoot camera. It’s not the best quality but worth sharing:
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Thanks for a good post
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[...] penned in a previous post I was walking the back streets of the Beijing a while back and ran into the gentleman in this video [...]
[...] also a treasure to find some traditional Chinese instruments. Personally, I like the Sanxian(三弦) but there is just about every instrument to buy [...]