Australia Guqin Society Incorporated

Movement I · Origins

A Song of High Mountains and Flowing Water, in the Southern Hemisphere

The Australia Guqin Society Incorporated was founded in Melbourne in 2017. What began with a dozen-odd guqin friends has grown to several hundred members today — a growth owed both to Chinese communities spreading across the world, and to the deepening appreciation of Chinese cultural heritage. Melbourne, a true meeting point of cultures, has proven fertile ground for the guqin tradition to take root and flourish.

Silk strings upon paulownia wood — within them, an ancient voice endures. The guqin is native to China, carried through millennia unbroken, foremost among the "Four Arts" of qin, chess, calligraphy and painting. It is far more than an instrument for pleasing the ear: it is a vessel through which scholars have long cultivated the self and communed with heaven and earth. To play is to still the mind and see clearly into one's nature — inward peace, outward connection across ages.

The heart of the qin entrusts itself to mine; my heart, in turn, reveals the heart of the qin. Here in the Southern Hemisphere, we gather this ancient, unbroken sound, hoping to answer — with hearts of our own time — a heart that has never ceased to sound.

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