Qin 琴 Gesprächskonzert

The qin 琴 (also known as the guqin 古琴, ‘ancient qin’) is a fretted zither used in classical Chinese music. For no other instrument was music notated and passed down so early, nor has so much been written about any other instrument. This instrument is mentioned several times in the earliest Chinese collection of poetry, the Shijing (Book of Songs), dating from the 10th to the 7th century BC. The qin is the classical instrument of scholars, poets and painters, philosophers and rulers, to whose cultural refinement it was intended to contribute. Some of the surviving pieces are traditionally associated with well-known figures of antiquity such as Confucius, the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi or the poet Qu Yuan. Confucius himself is said to have played the qin masterfully. The oldest surviving instruments date from the Tang Dynasty (618–917), many of which are still playable. In 2003, the art of the qin was inscribed by UNESCO on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Li Hechun
The Daoist Li Hechun is abbot of the Zhizhen Temple (Temple of Perfect Truth) in Chengdu and vice-president of the All-China Daoist Association. He is the founder and director of the Academy of Daoist Arts and is responsible for the preservation of Daoist music (intangible cultural heritage) in Chengdu. He was born in Shangluo, Shaanxi, in 1978 and grew up in an environment steeped in traditional Daoist culture. This includes playing the qin and calligraphy, as well as Chinese martial arts (wushu), methods for nurturing life (yangsheng) and qigong. He received his training from various masters. He is the author of numerous publications on Daoist culture and Daoist rituals.