peekofhistory:

Making Guqin silk strings

Thanks to @asideoftrashplease ’s ask (here) I asked my teacher who we get our silk strings from, and if it would be possible to visit their workshop to see the process first-hand. My teacher reached out to our silk-string maker, Mr. Fang Ronglin (方荣林) in Suzhou, which is about a 1.5 hr bullet train ride away, and we arranged a visit yesterday :D

Mr. Fang is currently in his 80s, but still working daily. The place he works at also has people making steel strings , and Erhu strings, but only he and his student, Liao Xia (廖霞) make the Guqin silk strings.

He told us that he started learning to make Guqin silk strings at 16 with his father, and this has been a craft passed down in his family for four generations. In the 1960s, steel strings were invented which greatly impacted the demand for silk strings. Steel strings have less flexibility than silk strings, but the sound is louder and clearer, making it easier for beginners to use.

Here’s a short interview clip I found of Mr. Fang when they applied for Guqin silk string making to be added to the Gusu Region Intangible Cultural Heritage List (in recent years, China has pushed to preserve many of the traditional crafts under Intangible Cultural Heritage/非物质文化遗产 (非遗)):

When they receive the silk thread from the silk companies, the thread is about a hair’s thickness (this is about 8 raw silk threads combined). They then need to combine these threads to various thicknesses needed for Guqin strings. The thickest string on the Guqin (string #1) requires about 400 combined silk threads, which means it needs about 3200 raw silk threads (8 raw threads x 400 combined threads).

You can see in this pic below, each string is made up of many small, thin silk threads. These ones are after they’ve been combined and are hung to dry.

When Mr. Fang was younger, this was all done by hand, but with more and more people learning traditional instruments now they’ve invented a machine to speed up the process. Mr. Fang told us that if they had to combine all the threads by hand, a person can only complete about 1-2 strings/day. It would be very labour-intensive and the end result very expensive.

Here are some videos of Mr. Fang and his student, Liao Xia, demonstrating how to combine the threads. You can see how flexible the silk is, after the machine spins and combines the strings, the tension tightens causing the strings to shorten. Mr. Fang then stretches the strings back:

As he was demonstrating, I kept thinking this would be incredibly difficult to do through human strength alone. That machine was spinning so fast, to depend on human arm strength to get the same tension would require so much practice.

The more I learn about these traditional crafts the more I’m in awe at people of the past who couldn’t use machines and still managed to invent so many amazing things.

Mr. Fang also took us to see how they make steel strings. The workers were wrapping the steel in nylon. They made it look so simple, it really all comes down to practice, practice, practice. Hours, days, months, years, there are no shortcuts to these sorts of skills. Even with the help of machines, it still requires practice.

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