I’ve always been fascinated by traditional Chinese music and how it contrasts so dramatically with Western music. Legend has it that thousands of years ago, a man named Ling Lun was so entranced by the sound of birds that he fashioned a bamboo flute and tuned it to match the birds’ songs. That may or may not be true, but we do know that Chinese music dates back nearly 10,000 years, making China’s musical tradition one of the oldest in the world. The earliest flutes, made from the wing bone of cranes, date back to the Neolithic era.

In 2015, while excavating tombs at Zaoyang city, Hubel province, archeologists discovered a plucked string instrument buried for 2,500 years. Called a “Se,” it has 50 twisted silk strings stretched on a rectangular frame. The find was significant, as the Zaoyang Se is the oldest   musical   instrument   ever