Gen-Z musicians inject vitality into traditional Chinese musical instruments

In a mesmerizing performance, a haunting melody of a bone flute dating back more than 8,000 years ago echoes through the Henan Museum in Zhengzhou city, central China's Henan Province, transporting audiences thousands of years back in time. Dressed in traditional attire, Yan Wentao, a young musician born after 1995 who plays with the museum's Huaxia Ancient Music Orchestra, breathes life into the traditional musical instrument.

"I feel immense pride in playing bone flute, the earliest heptatonic instrument discovered in China," said Yan, who has two decades of experience in playing the bamboo flute.

Members of Huaxia Ancient Music Orchestra of Henan Museum, an orchestra that performs ancient Chinese music, are playing music with traditional Chinese instruments. (Photo/Courtesy of the Culture and Tourism Department of Henan Province)

When Yan joined the orchestra that performs ancient Chinese music in 2018, he was assigned the task of replicating and playing Jiahu bone flute, the most precious treasure of the museum. Yan successfully reproduced the bone flute after carefully studying the cultural relics and drawing on the experience of predecessors.

Over the past six years, Yan, together with other members of the orchestra, has taken part in nearly 2,000 performances with the bone flute.

With the average age of its members being about 30 years old, the orchestra is also playing pop music with ancient instruments, combining the ancient and the modern while becoming an internet sensation, Yan said.

Peng Jingxuan, born after 1995, uses guzheng, a traditional Chinese musical instrument, to help the world understand China.

She started learning guzheng at the age of 7. After graduating from the Wuhan Conservatory of Music in 2017, Peng went to France to pursue further studies.

Peng Jingxuan plays guzheng in Paris, France. (Xinhua/Gao Jing)

In France, she encountered many artists playing the guitar and other musical instruments of foreign countries on streets, but found that few played traditional Chinese musical instruments. This led her to come up with the idea of playing guzheng on the streets in France.

In 2018, Peng put on a guzheng performance for the first time on a street in France. As her performance concluded, Peng was met with enthusiastic applause from the onlookers. Since then, she has started recording her performances on the streets and sharing them online.

Peng selects a wide variety of songs for her performances, including traditional guzheng classics, pop music, and the world's musical masterpieces.

To introduce guzheng to more people, she has collaborated with foreign violoncellists, opera singers, and dance groups to create videos. Her videos have sparked global interest, with many foreign viewers expressing their strong interest in traditional Chinese culture.

"I want to innovate and inspire more young people to appreciate traditional music," Peng said, adding that she will try new methods to help guzheng integrate into modern life and let the world hear more of China's voices.

In Quanzhou city, southeast China's Fujian Province, Cai Jianfang, an instrument maker born after 1995, is the fifth-generation inheritor of crafting traditional musical instruments for Nanyin, a musical performing art originated in the city, in his family.

He innovatively makes a kind of pipa that blends the features of two major schools of pipa - the Northern and Southern schools, and makes it better suitable for the musical characteristics of Nanyin.

Cai can make multiple Nanyin musical instruments, including the pipa, paiban, erhu, sanxian and erxian. "In addition to orchestras, amateur musicians, especially young people, have bought these traditional instruments in recent years," Cai said, adding that the trend is driven by diverse Nanyin performance opportunities fueled by thriving tourism in Quanzhou.