A Butterfly Lights Beside Us

A butterfly lights beside us, like a sunbeam...
and for a brief moment it's glory
and beauty belong to our world...
but then it flies on again, and although
we wish it could have stayed,
we are so thankful to have seen it at all.

Dear friends in music,

I want to thank you all for your appreciation and comments that you have kindly put on the comment space. These give me great encouragement to continue my exploration into this music realm. But I dare not to take all the credit to myself, because this music comes from an ancient tradition - it is the work of many masters in the past centuries that shape the classical tradition as of today. There is still a vast territory that remain to be explored. Thank you for your kind support.

Meanwhile, I saw from the comment space that there is some confusion regarding my name (family name and given name), and I feel obliged to give a little explanation. To do this, I must explain a little bit about the very basic of Chinese language.

Chinese language is based on written signs or symbols called "characters". Each character has one or more meanings according to the context; the pronunciation of one character is always one syllable. There is a whole phonetic system (pinyin) to help rememorizing the pronunciation of the characters (as in a dictionary), but phonetic pinyin can never replace the original character in actual writing. Otherwise, confusion is inevitable.

There are four different ways (4 tones) to pronounce the same pronunciation in today's Mandarin - flat tone (1), glissando from low to high pitch(2), from high to low pitch(4), the combination(3, from higher to low and then back to high pitch). There is another one which pronounce short and non-stressed (0). The famous example would be (Ma1-Ma0-ma4-ma3) which stands for "The mother curses the horse". (Note that in ancient time, there were at least 9 tones).

In Chinese, the family name is called Xing (the character consists of two parts - the left part is symbol for "female" or "women", the right part stand for "birth"), which implies that in the very remote past, people were recognized by their mothers. There are a few hundreds of commonly-used family name in China that remain the same from the very ancient time. However, there are a few tens of family names that are most wide-spread. For instance, the first 10 family names - Zhang, Wang, Li, Zhao, Chen, Yang, Wu, Liu, Zhou, Huang - cover 40% of the total population in China, and the first 45 family names covers 70% of the total population.

The given name is totally free chosen, normally by the parents the the grand parents. However, one can change it when he (or she) becomes grown up. Normally a given name consists of one or two characters. Since each character has a certain meaning, one wouldn't choose the characters that have bad or unlucky meaning. Here one can normally tell the gender according to the given name - thus characters related to feminum characteristics such as flowers, fragrance, moon, beauty, grace, etc. are often chosen for girls' name whereas masculine characters such as strong (or will-strong), power, wisdom, solid, progress, etc. are often chosen for boys. However, there are many exceptions, because now-a-days, many men have female name and women have male name - which might be a good sign for equality. Of course there are also many people who choose characters that are quite neutral as their given name. Therefore, given a list of names, there are almost always some names which one cannot guess their gender until you see the person. In the old times, names are also partially reflect their social status. For instance, intellectuals often have more poetic or philosophically-implied names, whereas common people often have more common names. Traditionally, choosing a name for a person is a very important and serious matter, because many people believe that wrong name can bring bad luck. There can be more complications if the family keep the tradition of a family tree. In this case, one can recognize to which generation a person belongs according his given name. In this case, the given name must consists two characters, where one of the characters is prescribed according to the family tree such that the same generation must have the same character. The other one character of the given name can be freely chosen for the individuel. So it is not rare to find in big families that a 60-year-old man calls a 3-year old boy uncle or newly born baby girl aunt, because they simply belong to different generations according to the family tree (thus their names). Needless to say, even today, it is a serious matter, because the name has a meaning, and is called so many times through one's life, such that it becomes part of oneself.

Family name goes first according to the Chinese tradition, which is just the opposite of the west. That reminds me of another interesting difference: in China the address (for both receiver and sender) on an envelop always follows this order: Country - province - City - street - the house number and the receiver's name. This is just the opposite here in the west. Therefore, most Chinese people living in the west have changed the order of their names to void confusion. But I cannot.

My name Liu Fang is written as in Chinese, where Liu is the family name and Fang is the given name. Liu doesn't have particular meaning but sounds the same as another two characters also pronounce Liu, which means "spread" or "remain". Fang means "fragrance" of a flower. Together it can be interpreted as "fragrance remains, though the flower is gone", and when referring to music, "The music remains, though the sound is gone". I guess my parents chose this name for me as a good wish for my life as musician. If I would changed the order of my name, it would become "Fang Liu" which has totally different meaning, and doesn't sounds nice phonetically. As a compromise, I took the family name of my husband, Wang, when I immigrated to Canada. In this way, my official name (printed on all official documents) is Liu-Fang Wang such that Liu Fang becomes my given name (as well as artist name). My friends can call me Liu Fang or sometimes also Fang, but I preferred to be called "Liu Fang" together as given name.

Thank you for your time in reading this. I hope this could be a little help when you happen to travel in China or meet Chinese friends.

Liu Fang

November 29, 2007
Montreal

A story about music and friends

In Chinese classical repertoire, there is a famous piece called "High mountain and flowing water" – derived from the ancient story of how the guqin master Boya met his good friend Ziqi who is a woodcutter. Boya lived in the "Spring and Autumn" era (around 600 BC) in the Kingdom of Chu (during that time China was temporarily divided into several Kingdoms when the central Empire of Zhou became weak). Boya's art was always inspired by the beautiful nature, and he did much traveling around. One day he traveled to the south mountain and played his guqin (seven stringed zither) in a hut. Suddenly one of his string was broken. He felt that at the moment the energy was so strong, that there must be somebody else listening and the spirit resonating with his. So he open the door, and to his surprise, he found a woodcutter standing outside, apparently moved to tears by his music. His name is Ziqi. Boya invited him in, and played one tune for him. Ziqin said softly that he saw this "lofty spirit in the mountain" and this "vast spirit in the flowing water". Boya expresses surprise saying: "your heart is the same as mine". They become good friends. Some years later, when Boya traveled to this place again, but only found that his friend Ziqi was died a while ago. Boya went to play in front of his tomb for the last time and smashed his instrument, saying "now that my zhi-yin (two Chinese characters that literally mean "know" and "music" respectively) has passed away, what is the purpose of my playing the guqin?" From that time on, the two Chinese characters "zhi-yin() has been meant as "good friend" or "soul mate".

To this theme there are classical pieces from the ancient traditions for guqin, guzheng as well as pipa of various versions originated from different schools. The styles of playing are also different, however, they all have the same title "High mountain and flowing water". In Liu Fang's guzheng solo album(track No. 4), she has used the version from Zhejiang province, south-east China. In her first pipa solo album The soul of Pipa Vol. 1(track No. 3), Liu Fang took the version derived from Hennan Province. Traditionally, when musicians meet for the first time, they often play this tune to show respect and appreciation to each other.

Click on the following sound icon to hear "High Mountain and flowing water" interpreted by Liu Fang guzheng solo.

Link: Friendship and Happiness - a beautiful essay by an anonymous author.