Shanghai Eastern Musical Instruments Museum

Eastern Musical Instruments Museum

The Eastern Musical Instruments Museum serves as a patriotic education base.

The Shanghai Eastern Musical Instruments Museum is the first of its kind in China’s art academies. Its establishment began in the summer of 1985, evolving from the “Chinese National Musical Instruments Exhibition Room” and the “Eastern Musical Instruments Exhibition Hall.” Inspired by the call to “deliver first-class music education and achieve internationally advanced standards,” the museum was expanded in 2001 into the “Eastern Musical Instruments Museum,” with the name inscribed by former president He Luting. The current exhibition space covers approximately 1,200 m² and is divided into four exhibition areas—Ancient Chinese Instruments, Modern Chinese Instruments, Ethnic Minority Instruments, and Foreign Ethnic Instruments—as well as a multimedia exhibition hall.

The museum currently houses around 400 sets of instruments. Among the ancient instruments, the oldest is the Jiahu bone flute dating back 8,000 years, which already featured a seven-tone scale. Other treasures in the collection include bronze

yu and bronze drums unearthed from the Han Dynasty, as well as the se and guqin passed down from the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The largest instrument on display is a replica of the Zenghouyi Bianzhong. Particularly eye-catching are replicas of items from the Shōsōin repository in Nara, Japan—the four-stringed and five-stringed pipas from the Tang Dynasty, adorned with dazzling mother-of-pearl, jade, and agate inlays that shimmer brilliantly, showcasing exquisite craftsmanship.

The modern ethnic instruments section displays the orchestral instruments currently in use in China: featuring dozens of wind, bowed, plucked, and percussion instruments, it showcases the reform achievements and development trajectory of Chinese instruments since the 1950s.

The ethnic minority instruments section presents a colorful array of wind and other instruments from various ethnic groups across China. Examples include the kouxian (mouth harp), baguan (octagonal lute), and xiaomendi (small bamboo flute) of the Yi people; the mangluo (gong) and xiangjiao drum of the Dai people; the zhanxi and lerong of the Jingpo people; the maguhu and bolie of the Zhuang people; the lusheng of the Miao people; the danxian (single-stringed zither) of the Jing people; and the bawu of the Hani people. There are also instruments from the Kazakh people of Xinjiang, such as the dombra; the dutar and rawap of the Uyghur people; the dungchen and secular zamnye of Tibetan monasteries; the morin khuur (horsehead fiddle) of the Mongolian people; the changgo of the Korean people; and the bangu of the Manchu people.

The foreign ethnic instruments section showcases traditional and folk instruments from around the world, such as the veena, sitar, and tabla from India; the shakuhachi, chikuzen biwa, satsuma biwa, and kouxian from Japan; the gayageum, haegeum, ajaeng, and hyeongeum from Korea; the khong wong, xylophone, and crocodile zither from Thailand; the angklung from Indonesia; the balalaika from Russia; and the didgeridoo from Australia.

Multimedia Systems and Public Access

In May 2003, with funding from Hong Kong Health Care Centre Limited, the Eastern Musical Instruments Museum launched a multimedia information construction project. Key components included: 1) bilingual (Chinese and English) touchscreen guide systems; 2) multilingual (Chinese, English, and Japanese) audio tour systems for the exhibition halls; 3) a multimedia demonstration hall; and 4) a “World Ethnic Instruments Information Retrieval” system—featuring a computer research room.

Starting in October 2003, the Eastern Musical Instruments Museum opened an access channel on Fenyang Road and officially began public admission.