Da Wei, qin musician from Shanghai Conservatory

Everyone would have preferred this musician,  Dai Wei who is an associate professor at the Shanghai Conservatory   to play her music than for usto suffer her  English.  Evidently she has a residency at UCLA that does not require lecturing, though she says  one is required...the playing  reminded me of my 12 lessons on the guqin which is the updated instrument and my instructor and I exchanging q and A in my very minimal Chinese, as she had no English. . The qin was originally not meant to be played in front of a wider audience, but rather in a setting of a tearoom, for instance, or with a few friends, or in solitude of a scholar's studio.   We learned that most musicians prefer playing a music that evokes landscape, though there are also subjects following the Tao.  As for description, Dai Wei  says she can imagine water flowing, but not an (object) like a mountain. The most difficult music to play, is one of "understanding", as one cannot "learn" to play it. Such  music follows thought.  However, Lyical, lovepoems and  and those with subjects of patriotism follow "feeling".  Her playing has charm:  She plays a piece about geese landing on sand, one about a drunkard(two variants), and the final one about an Empress feeling resentment(as she has been moved to a palace to live by herself). An amusing accompaniment was the sound of a crow cawing through the last piece, the one about the Empress's resentment.   I took notation of it, as it was so rhymically aligned.  The insistent crow creates a counterpoint:

Crow's counterpoint 
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copyright Janet Roberts2013