Chagan Lake, located in the northwest of Jilin Province and the former Golros Mongol Autonomous County in the east of the Songliao Plain, not only has a grand winter fishing, ice lake fish, but also a vast grassland on the lakeside, is the "hometown of matouqin".
Horse head qin, is a kind of bow string instrument with a long history of the Mongolian people, the body is wooden, about one meter long, there are two strings, the resonance box is trapezoidal, because the head of the piano is carved with a horse's head and named.
The sound of the horse's head piano, ethereal and lofty as a long tune, and the faint and desolate like humming wheat, listening to it can make people out of their souls.
Horse head piano performance on the grassland of Qianguo County
The antique complex on the shores of Chagan Lake, the former Golros Prince's Mansion, is deeply hidden in the exhibition hall of the hometown of China's horse-head qin. The exhibition hall is small in size, displaying a variety of horse-head organs, and introducing the history and production process of horse-head organs with pictures and texts.
The exhibition board in the exhibition hall tells such an interesting legend in words: a shepherd missed the dead pony very much, so he used the leg bone of the pony as the pillar, the skull as the barrel, the ponytail as the string, and the wooden horse head carved in the shape of the pony on the top of the handle, so it was named "horse head qin".
The sound of the horse's head piano wafted through the ice and snow of Qianguo County
The legend may not be able to be verified, but in the grasslands on the shores of Chagan Lake, the people of various ethnic groups such as Mongolia and Han have lived and multiplied for a long time, and have a deep sense of nature with heaven and earth, forming a unique national culture.
In the early 1980s, Mongolian scholars such as Sukhbaru, a former Golros, examined the long history of the horse-head qin in Qianguo County. The melodious sound of the horse's head piano accompanied the former Guo people all the way from the grassland and became an indispensable part of cultural life.
Horsehead music has a long history of inheritance and rich mass base in Qianguo County, and more than 2,000 people can skillfully play the horsehead piano.
In 2006, Qianguo County was officially named "the hometown of China's horse-head piano" by the Chinese National Orchestra Society. In 2008, Qianguo County's Matouqin Music was included in the list of representative items of national intangible cultural heritage.
Bai Su Gulang taught the students the art of making the violin
Born in the Hulunbuir grassland, Bai Su Gulang has been fond of horse head organs since he was a child, and came to Qianguo County in 2005 to start making horse head organs. Today, he is already a representative inheritor of the matou qin making skills of the national intangible cultural heritage protection project.
"I hope to use my own hands to inherit traditional skills and carry forward national culture." In the past 5 years, Bai Su Gulang has trained more than 200 trainees to master the skills of violin making.
The horse's head piano has a long tone. In Qianguo County, there are too many people like Bai Su Gulang who silently contribute to the inheritance and development of matouqin culture.
Horsehead piano music class on the former Guo County campus
Over the years, Qianguo County has insisted on promoting the development of horsehead music as an important cultural undertaking, and has established the first horsehead piano art performance group in China, the Guo er Ross Horsehead Piano Orchestra, and constantly exploring ways to broaden the popularity of horsehead music.
At present, a total of 30 schools in the county have carried out matouqin music courses, set up special matouqin music classrooms, and more than 2,000 students have learned matouqin. Nahoya, Alatan and other communities have opened free horse head piano lessons for the masses for three consecutive years, and the cumulative number of practitioners in the county has reached more than 10,000 people.
In 2019, Qianguo County Matouqin played "My Motherland and Me" in unison
In 2019, Qianguo County organized the 2019 horsehead piano to play "My Motherland and Me", creating the Guinness World Record for the largest horsehead piano ensemble.
"Every piano I make is integrated into a lot of feelings." Bai Su Gulang said that the piano has feelings, and the sound of the piano is also the voice of the heart. The horse head piano on the shore of Chagan Lake conveys the voice of the former Guo people.