Origins
Historians offer several theories to explain how the instrument was introduced to China:
- that the instrument may have been introduced by land, through the Silk Road;
- that it was introduced by sea, through the port of Guangzhou (Canton); or
- that it was invented without foreign influence by the Chinese themselves.
The word "yangqin" has historically been written in two different ways, using different Chinese characters for "yang". The "yang" in the earlier version was written with the character 洋, meaning "foreign." It was later changed, in 1910, to the character "yang" (揚), meaning "acclaimed" and is also the first character of the name of Yangzhou (揚州) which some Chinese linguistic scholars have stated was done because the latter term was more politically correct during a period when China was resisting foreign cultural influences.
Read more about this topic: Yangqin
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)