The China National Musical Instrument Exhibition Hall, of the Minhang Museum, has recently opened to the public in Xinzhuang Subway Square in Shanghai.

A collection of more than 300 musical instruments span China's history from the Neolithic Age to today, adding richly to Shanghai's and China's music culture collection.

The exhibition hall which is sponsored by the Minhang Museum and Shanghai's No.1 National Musical Instruments Factory, is located on the 5th floor of the Xinzhuang Subway Square Building, covering 700 square meters.

Both the genuine musical instrument relics and their replicas are displayed in four categories according to different characteristics: aerophones, chordophones, idiophones and membranophones. The musical instruments range from bone whistles of 7,000 BP, Neolithic Age, fish-shaped pottery-holed wind instrument of 4,000 BP, Xia Dynasty, percussion instruments of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, pipe instruments of the Han and Jin dynasties, plucked instruments of the Tang Dynasty and stringed instruments of the Ming and Qing dynasties, to instruments collected or donated by famous people of modern times, as well as instruments of 55 minority ethnic groups. The hall also shows statues of renown Chinese musical figures such as musician and composer Liu Tianhua (1895-1932) and folk musician Hua Yanjun, also known as Abing (1895-1950), fully illustrating the diversity of Chinese national music.

Most of the musical instruments come from the former Musical Instrument Museum which was subordinated to the Shanghai No.1 National Musical Instruments Factory. For decades, the factory has dedicated itself to finding, collecting and improving Chinese national musical instruments. Now we can see a Dunhuang treasured gong in the exhibition hall, which has a diameter of 1.37 meters, the largest one of the Chao Gong in China. You strike it once and the sound will linger in the air for one minute. Also there is a set of chimes in complete detail taken from Record of Laws and Systems of the Qing Dynasty and the chime stones from Hotan of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, where famous jade comes from. In the collection of modern times, people can see the flute with which master Lu Chunling played for the late Chairman Mao Zedong and Queen Elizabeth. There is also a drum on a pedestal, shaped like an elephant's leg, which came from Marshal Chen Yi, who was given the drum as a gift from former Myanmar Prime Minister U Nu. The products by the late pipa manufacturing master Wan Zhichu are also found there.

Besides musical instruments, the hall also displays a lot of materials on musical history e.g., the four-volume Chinese Music History compiled by Zheng Jinwen and published in 1928. Also, the 40 glass negatives taken between 1930 and 1935 on the Datong Music Society record 143 folk musical instruments which were later lost.

(China.org.cn translated by Li Jinhui, May 16, 2003)