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An elegant and beautiful woman sits on the floor with her two children and various pets.<br/><br/> The exquisitely dressed lady is tuning the strings she has just wound onto her instrument, a pipa lute. A silver box containing rolls of spare strings lies open on the floor beside her.
'The Night Revels of Han Xizai' is a painted scroll depicting Han Xizai, a minister of the Southern Tang Emperor Li Yu (937-978). This narrative painting is split into five distinct sections: Han Xizai listens to the pipa, watches dancers, takes a rest, listens to music, and then sees guests off.<br/><br/> The original, painted by Gu Hongzhong (937-975), is lost, but a 12th century copy, housed in the Palace Museum in Beijing, survives (reproduced here).<br/><br/> The full scroll should be viewed from right to left.
Totoya Hokkei was a Japanese printmaker and book illustrator. He initially studied painting with Kano Yosen (1735-1808), the head of the Kobikicho branch of the Kano School and <i>okaeshi</i> (official painter) to the Tokugawa shogunate.<br/><br/> Together with Teisai Hokuba (1771-1844), Hokkei was one of Katsushika Hokusai's best students.
Pipa Jing was a fictional character in the Ming Dynasty novel 'Fengshen Yanyi'. She was a <i>yaojing</i> (demon/spirit) changed from a jade pipa (musical instrument), summoned by the Chinese goddess Nuwa to bring chaos to the Shang Dynasty after King Zhou of Shang insulted her within her own temple.<br/><br/> Alongside two other spectres, Su Daji and Jiutou Zhiji Jing, Pipa Jing changed her form to that of an exceptionally attractive young woman and went to bewitch King Zhou and the people of Shang. She was killed when she tried to get her fortune read by Jiang Ziya, a Chinese nobleman. Sensing that Pipa Jing actually was an evil spirit, he exposed her for what she really was and killed her by unleashing a 'triple divine fire', combined with 'shattering lightning'.<br/><br/> Pipa Jing was eventually revived five years later by Su Daji, after the vixen spirit gathered the essence of both moon and sun and combined them.
The pipa is a four-stringed Chinese musical instrument, belonging to the plucked category of instruments. Sometimes called the Chinese lute, the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets ranging from 12 to 26. Another Chinese four-string plucked lute is the liuqin, which looks like a smaller version of the pipa.<br/><br/> The pipa is one of the most popular Chinese instruments and has been played for almost two thousand years in China.
Naxi music is 500 years old, and with its mixture of literary lyrics, poetic topics, and musical styles from the Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties, as well as some Tibetan influences, it has developed its own unique style and traits. There are three main styles: Baisha, Dongjing, and Huangjing, all using traditional Chinese instruments.<br/><br/> The Naxi or Nakhi are an ethnic group inhabiting the foothills of the Himalayas in the northwestern part of Yunnan Province, as well as the southwestern part of Sichuan Province in China. The Naxi are thought to have come originally from Tibet and, until recently, maintained overland trading links with Lhasa and India.<br/><br/> The Naxi form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. The Naxi are traditionally followers of the Dongba religion. Through both Han Chinese and Tibetan cultural influences, they adopted Tibetan Buddhism and, to a lesser extent, Taoism, in the 10th century.
Four Chinese female musicians playing from left to right; a sanxian, a pipa, an erxian and an erhu