recent cultural activities

We periodically join Dan's students when they have cultural activities. Some of the things we've done in the last month included hearing a demonstration of guzheng music by one of CUN's students in the music department. She shared a little about the history of the guzheng as well as different styles that have evolved over the centuries. Interestingly, the pitch to which the strings are tuned, being easily changed by moving the bridge of each string, has changed over time - modern songs use a different scale altogether. Here is a link to a free, downloadable guzheng song (track 5 of the ones listed) as blogger doesn't have an easy way to upload music into a blog post.

We also learned how to carve stone seals. After sanding a piece of soapstone so it was level, we then used a maobi, or brush pen, and ink, to draw a reverse image of what we wanted our stamp to look like. Then we used a chisel to carve away the empty space around our designs.