In his famous ninth-century treatise, the Tang-dynasty artist Zhang Yanyuan (张彦远) wrote, "To paint landscape is not merely to depict its outward likeness; the true value lies in capturing its spirit and atmosphere.” To Zhang, nature was seen not merely as place, but as a medium through which the life force Chinese call qi could be revealed.

One of the most famous examples of this type of landscape painting is Li Tang’s (李唐) twelfth-century work, Wind in the Pines Among a Myriad Valleys (万壑松风), which serves as the inspiration for contemporary Chinese composer Jia Guoping’s (贾国平) 2014 piece The Pine-soughing Valleys (万壑松风).

Written for sheng, zheng, and orchestra, the work is built around five core sound images that correspond to features in Li Tang’s painting. In a highly detailed approach, Jia organizes its form and pitch structures to convey these sonic images. I will provide a high-level analysis of this work, specifically attempting to connect it to the concepts in Tang and Song Dynasty paintings that define their progression beyond mimesis toward the expression of qi. I will also situate this work within Jia’s larger body of work, many pieces of which also seek to express concepts related to nature, landscape, and the power of harmony between heaven and humanity.

This paper examines how regional xiqu (Chinese opera) production became a vehicle for cultural reformation and propaganda surrounding the first Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China in the 1950s. Focusing on the Shandong Provincial Lüju Company, I trace the activities and trajectories of cultural workers who created new performances to reform local marital norms and values during the national xiqu reform period (1949–1966). I argue that the constitution of marriageability and intimate life was inextricably interwoven with national policy, local histories, and individual experience within this propaganda project.

Following the national xiqu reform, state-owned troupes across China transformed regional performance traditions to align with national cultural standards and convey ideological messages through top-down initiatives. The Shandong Provincial Lüju Company gained particular prominence by adapting the revolutionary novel The Remarriage of the Widow Li Ersao (Wang 1950) for the national stage in 1954. National media frequently cited the production as a model for integrating folk traditions with "socialist realism" and state-promoted marriage patterns. The play reinforced the implementation of the Marriage Law and circulated widely through traveling troupes and opera films. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, this paper illuminates the paradoxical negotiations among local norms, institutional practices, and collective knowledge that shaped — and continue to shape — marital imaginaries and gendered patterns in Chinese society. In doing so, it contributes to interdisciplinary conversations on the cultural politics of intimacy, the performative dimensions of cultural reform, and the enduring legacies of socialist cultural production.

This paper explores the complex roles of Chinese dialect-based clan associations in shaping local musical culture in Jonker Walk, Malacca. Located in the heart of a UNESCO World Heritage site, Jonker Walk’s history traces back to the "Guan Chang" (official depots) of Admiral Zheng He's voyages and served as a primary settlement for early Chinese migrants. Since the 18th century, these associations have enriched Malacca’s cultural landscape with diverse traditional Chinese music. In 2000, Jonker Walk was designated as a "Tourism and Culture Street," making Chinese performance the core of its tourism industry, bringing both new opportunities and challenges to these associations.

Based on four rounds of fieldwork conducted between February 2025 and February 2026, this research combines archival study with musical analysis to examine how these associations navigate the interactions between heritage conservation, tourism development, and commercialization. The analysis unfolds on two levels: first, the evolution of musical forms and performance types within the associations and their impact on the local soundscape; second, how the external context of commercialization and "heritagization" has prompted these groups to adapt and transform their musical presentations. By integrating ethnographic data with musical analysis, this study presents the strategic musical choices made by these diasporic communities as they negotiate their practices within a commercialized heritage context.

This paper investigates the historical formation and sociocultural positioning of blind musicians in China and Japan, challenging explanations that foreground sensory compensation in favor of a nuanced social perception of divinity—as well as functions of music that come along with that perception—as central to their musicality and musicianship. This study demonstrates that in East Asia, since at least the sixth century BCE in China and the eighth century CE in Japan, it was the belief in the sacred and supernatural attributes of the blind body that defined blind musicians’ social roles. Drawing on archival, textual, and ethnographic sources, I trace how visually impaired musicians—such as Shaanbei blind bards and Japanese biwa performers—have been alternately revered as ritual specialists with shamanic or Buddhist associations and stigmatized as beggars or socially marginal figures. Through a comparative lens informed by concepts of specialism, professionalism, and social status, this study reveals how perceptions of divinity shaped social understandings of blindness and embodied musical expertise in the two countries. This analysis extends to transformations in the twentieth century, including modernization, state intervention, and cultural heritage policies that recast blind musicians’ roles in nation-building and community preservation. By foregrounding the interplay of religious imaginaries, disability, and musical labor, the paper contributes to broader ethnomusicological conversations about historical and sociopolitical constructions of musicianship and disabilities.