Disputes between China and Japan are nothing new, but Dr Yang Yuanzheng from the Department of Music managed to uncover one stretching back to the seventh century. Yang has become a world authority on the qin since embarking on two highly-acclaimed postgraduate theses on the ancient Chinese stringed instrument and its music after completing a BE in Mechanics and Engineering at Peking University in 2003. His work tells the story of how China's position as the fount of qin music has been challenged by Japan since the discovery in the 17th century of two scrolls of music that originated in China but had been hidden in the Japanese imperial library for 1,000 years.
Yang's work -- which has involved cooperating with experts from Europe to digitise the invaluable scrolls so they could be studied by other music scholars and doing CAT scans of antique qin instruments held in US museums -- has been recognised and rewarded several times over the past 10 years. Among his achievements was being awarded the Li Ka Shing Prize twice (2003-05 and 2007-08) and the Ford Foundation Fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council in New York City (2006). He has held research fellowships at Princeton University and Utrecht University and published in the world's most prestigious musicological journals. Yang also received an Early Career Award from the Research Grants Council.
With assistance from his colleague in the Music Department, Professor Chan Hing-yan, Yang has organised several concerts and recordings of qin music while pioneering further research into the sounds and musical influences of the Tang Dynasty.
(Text reproduced from Faculty of Arts 100: A Century in Words and Images.)
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