Therefore, erhu was always a folk instrument, closely related to people’s everyday musical lives. It was also an instrument used by street musicians and beggars. Until the first part of the twentieth century, erhu had been used widely in accompanying singing and opera performances as an important instrument. The bow hairs are inserted between the two strings that are made of silk (in the past), steel, or steel wrapped with nylon.Įrhu was not a court instrument, since it did not appear until the Song and Yuan dynasties when large court entertainment ensembles were in decline. Erhu’s bow is made of reed ( jiang wei zhu, 76 cm) strung with horsehair or nylon.
Together with the bridge, qian jin sets the appropriate vibrating length of the strings (38 or 39 to 41 cm). Qian jin is made of a tight loop of soft silk string which encircles the shaft and strings. Two tuning pegs are set in the upper section of the shaft, while the lower end of the shaft is fixed onto the body. Its top is called the head of the instrument ( qin tou), and is either carved in the form of a dragon’s head or a half moon. The shaft (78 cm long) is made of the same wood as the body. Its front (8.8 cm in diameter) is covered with snakeskin, while the back is closed with a piece of pierced wood or bone ( yin chuang). Its shape is usually hexagonal, with round or octagonal regional variations. Erhu’s body (13 cm long) can be made of padouk wood ( hong mu), red sandalwood ( zi tan), or ebony wood ( wu mu). Erhu consists of a body ( qin tong), a shaft ( qin gan), two tuning pegs ( xuan zhou), a tight loop of string (qian jin), and a tiny bridge ( xuan ma). The structure of the modern erhu was regularized in the 1920s by Liu Tianhua (1895-1932), the pioneering musician and composer in modern Chinese erhu and pipa music. Erhu is a medium-high ranged Chinese two-stringed fiddle.
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