Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli  40

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

Composed by Bo Ya for the guqin.

But there is an awesome guzheng adaptation which is perhaps better known in modern times, partly because it is not as long/slow. TODO origin.

John Thompson's Guqin website.

Holy crap amazing list of Guqin pieces by the guy for MP3 download! www.silkqin.com/06hear.htm And the explanations are insane. What a dude. Ciro Santilli's hero.

Download all MP3:

Ciro Santilli Contacted John by email in 2019 telling him to put his stuff on YouTube and offering help, and he replied, but nothing came of it unfortunately. Edit: he uploaded a bunch of videos of him playing live in 2020! www.youtube.com/user/silkqin/videos

John focuses on playing the tunes in a "historically informed performance", in particular using silk strings rather than metal ones which are used by most modern artists: www.silkqin.com/08anal/hip.htm

Once Ciro Santilli played Suwu herding sheep while his mother in law was around, and she quickly pointed out:He's very popular!

And also a composer, e.g. he composed Reflections of the Moon on Erquan.

www.ibiblio.org/chinese-music/html/traditional.html contains an amazing orchestral version for di flute TODO identify! When attempting to upload to YouTube, it identifies as "Su Wu Tending the Sheep" and give a name "Chen Tao", but no further information. Chen Tao is presumably this dude: www.barduschinamusic.org/chen-tao-dizi | www.melodyofdragon.org/chentao.html 陈涛

baike.baidu.com/item/苏武牧羊/5532#11_2 mentions that it comes from an erhu concerto composed by Peng Xiuwen

The sadness of the erhu perfectly fits the role and mood of the story! Brilliant!

Composed by Abing in 1949^[ref]

Sometimes you just know that your existence will be remembered for a singular reason. Better than not being remembered at all perhaps.

TODO identify better:

Bibliography: