韦编三绝 is a chengyu that means "to study diligently", i.e. to read so much to the point that your book starts to wear down.
There is a Chinese Wiki page for this song: zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/韦编三绝 which says it dates from the early Qing dynasty
Video 1.
"The book binding broke three times" uploaded by guqincn
. Source.
Lit: fish timber question answer.
The dialog is also known as allegory for an incredibly deep philosophical discussion between an idealized wise woodcutter and a fisherman, e.g. mentioned at: www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Writings/Fisherman%20and%20Woodcutter.pdf
This song is just too slow for Ciro Santilli to make much out of it.
Figure 1.
Dialog between Fisherman and Woodcutter Chinese traditional painting by Xie Shichen
.
Video 1.
Dialog between Fisherman and Woodcutter uploaded by Fei Sun
. Source.
Video 2.
Dialog between Fisherman and Woodcutter performed by Wu Jinglüe
. Source. Accompagnied by di flute to reinforce the idea of two voices. This one has TODO year.
Li sao (guqin song) by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
www.facebook.com/131402556881886/posts/655763214445815/ gives an origin:
Li Sao was composed by Cheng Kangshi in late Tang dynasty based on the poem Li Sao, authored by Qu Yuan (340-278 BC) in the Warring States period of ancient China.
The silkqin.com entry: www.silkqin.com/04qart/07sqmp/57ls.htm does not mention this however.
Video 1.
Li sao performed by Guan Pinghu
. Source. Track from Master Of Traditional Chinese Music: guqin
Video 2.
Lisao performed by NiniGuqin (2020)
Source.
Ripples by ripples by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
A Baidu Baike page: baike.baidu.hk/item/層層水瀾/12386243 mentions that the score was published in 1970 by Tao Yimo (陶一陌) in a eponymous score book.
Video 1.
Ripples by ripples performed by Wu Li on the guzheng
. Source. Peformer's Chinese name: 吳莉.
Pipa piece by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
TODO identify better:
Video 1.
Posing As a Wind Instrument Player In an Ensemble by Li Xuan
. Source. Part of "Chinese Ancient Music - Vol 2, High Mountains And Flowing Water", e.g. as seen at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=If7ARKoMiKI.
Ambush from ten sides by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
Ambush from ten sides performed by Jiaju Shen (2017)
Source.
Video 2.
Ambush from ten sides performed live by Liu Dehai
. Source. The sound quality is not great, but you do get to see the master. TODO location and date.
Dance of the Yi People by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Composed by Wang Huiran in 1960.
The Yi people are one of the 55 Chinese ethnic minorities officially recognized by the Chinese government.
Video 1.
Dance of the Yi People performed by Liu Dehai
. Source. From the album Chinese Plucked Instruments: Vol. 2 - Fishermen’s Song At South Sea: www.amazon.co.uk/Chinese-Plucked-Instruments-Fishermens-South/dp/B001HUECZQ (2004)
Video 2.
Dance of the Yi People performed by Wu Man (2021)
Source. Presented by the Aga Khan Music Program.
This piece is a reference to Dragon boats from the Dragon Boat Festival.
The explosive moments presumably represent the intense rowing action of a dragon boat race competition.
TODO date composed.
Video 1.
Dragon boat performed by Yuanchun Yu (2021)
Source.
Suona by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
One of the most flashy chinese musical instrument!
It is very similar to the Indian shehnai.
Video 1.
Wang Jin beats Gao Qiu theme music from The Water Margin
. Source.
Video 1.
A Hundred Birds Pay Homage to the Phoenix with suona solo performed by Li Guangcai
. Source.
The most important publisher, AKA "CRC Jianian". TODO meaning of Jianian?
Chinese government owned unfortunately.
Their website takes forever to load: www.china-crc.com.cn/, and features mostly Communist shit, and I can't find the decent traditional music listed there.
https://web.archive.org/web/20241231212516if_/https://i.discogs.com/OG_VKgzKraqMNU7vd1OTSUZHKv7m6ItKbO0WKJHO4Zw/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:500/w:500/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9MLTc0MzA1/OS0xNDMzNTAwNzIy/LTM3ODcuanBlZw.jpeg

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 2.
    You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either https://OurBigBook.com or as a static website
    .
    Figure 3.
    Visual Studio Code extension installation
    .
    Figure 4.
    Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation
    .
    Figure 5.
    Web editor
    . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
    Video 4.
    OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo
    . Source.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact