Autumn is coming, the Qiang flute is playing, the slanting wind is drizzling, and the lonely long smoke in the desert seems to be filled with water vapor in the sky, moistening and weeping.
In ancient China, the Qiang flute represented the feeling of longing. Records about the Qiang flute are common in the poems of literati in the Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties. Wang Zhihuan, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, once wrote the poem "Why does the Qiang flute blame the willows? The spring breeze does not pass through Yumen Pass" to express his feelings of missing his relatives and friends.
The original Qiang flute was made of bird leg bones or mutton leg bones. It was used for two purposes: it was a wind instrument and a whip for riding horses, so it was also called "horse whip" or "blow whip". . Before the Western Han Dynasty, the Qiang flute had only four sound holes. By the 1st century BC, after Jingfang (77 BC and 37 AD) added a highest-pitched sound hole at the back, there were five sound holes.
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The autumn sound of the Qiang flute with wet smoke has a history of more than 2,000 years. The Qiang flutes in Chibusu and Shaba areas were brought from the western region by the Qiang people who migrated south during the wars between the Qin and Han Dynasties. According to historical records, before the Western Han Dynasty, there were four holes on the surface of the Qiang flute. In the first century AD, a high-pitched hole was added to the Qiang flute to make it five holes. Ma Rong of the Eastern Han Dynasty once wrote in "Ode to the Flute" that "the double flute originated from the Qiang in modern times". In the Tang Dynasty, there was also a famous saying "Why should the Qiang flute blame the willows".
In modern times, the Qiang flute has six holes. From this, it can be concluded that the Qiang flute has a history of at least two thousand years. Since the Qiang people have no written language, their history and culture are not only passed down orally from generation to generation, but the Qiang flute has also become an important channel for communication and inheritance of national culture. In May 2006, "Qiang flute playing and making skills" were included in the "First Batch of National Intangible Cultural Heritage Catalog".