If you spend some time searching on TaoBao, you will see some guqin for sale around few hundred RMB mark, that can all achieve:

• hand picked, aged wood

• traditional pure hand craft

• 2 years craftsmanship or above

• raw lacquer with deer antler powder

• professional or performance grade

• desirable timbre such as Gu (ancient)

Price can be as cheap as what is on wish.com, but none of the above can be verified with photos online.

These instruments usually have severe defects including strings hard to press down, subpar finishing that cause noise as well as increased surface resistance that all make playing more difficult. These are all quite detrimental to a newcomer learning guqin, as it squanders the best period for learning which is at the beginning when interest is highest.

What’s worse, is that the sound board and bottom board could be prone to cracking, and many surprisingly discovered that their qin was held together by metal nails. Even with Taobao’s return policy, some could not have rightful compensation granted, as it usually favours sellers in these instances.

Looking at labour cost alone, if we go by salary of￥2000/month (weekend break, no holidays, 8 hour work days), it would roughly equate to ￥11.5/hr/worker ($2.3AUD/hr/worker). This is roughly the cost of a low wage worker in China, with conservative work hour estimates.

With a guqin at retail sale price of ￥498 ($100AUD), if we allocate the total collected price into labour, it still can only sustain a single worker to spend 5 days on each instrument, before running out of money to cover for costs.

If we take a moment to think:

Where will the raw material cost come from?

Where will the warehousing cost come from?

Where will the online and offline marketing cost come from?

Where will the company owner’s profit come from?

At such a low labour cost, what should be the expected quality?

Furthermore, each batch of finished guqin will be ranked according to their timbre, ease of play, and aesthetics to price accordingly.

Online sound test also cannot avoid sound recording and reproduction process masking the true sound quality of the instrument, whether intentional or not.

Usually subpar instruments that are difficult to sell offline, will be prioritised for sending out to online sales that are blind to the product quality.

All points to the conclusion that, online purchases no matter hundreds or tens of thousands in price cannot avoid being sent inferior instruments.

Because I am a long term Sydney resident and do not travel to China very often, when I started learning guqin I had no choice but to purchase online.

My first qin was purchased online, which was the only top ranking google search result, and effectively the only shop open to overseas consumers.

The instrument I purchased was around $1200AUD (professional/concert grade), which had all 3 fundamental defects (沙音，打板，抗指）and was very painful to play more difficult pieces with, since the strings were so high (1st string 7th hui was over 1cm high). After a year of playing, the bottom board of the qin cracked by itself (I usually take great care in not bumping the instrument), and this have caused the 1,2,6,7 strings fan yin positions to shift out of place.

From a different perspective, here is an example where the guqin table sold from the website is $514AUD, but I have purchased the exact same item from Taobao for just $44AUD. Yes that’s right, a gross margin of over 90%, which is not even based on the cost price of the item (at most $22AUD as I later learnt). You can infer what would be the profit margin be like for the other products on this website.

Aesthetic value - material, shape, lacquer, extras (tuning peg, goose feet, bridge etc)

The price of a guqin are set from material selection. Only top end materials will have top end craftsmanship invested, which means starting from material selection, the price grading and potential of the finished instrument is already decided.

Most lower end mass production guqin will use wooden boards that have been glued or nailed together, with inadequate drying that leaves moisture still inside. Coupled with reduced crafting cycle, sometimes to 2-3 months as opposed to 2-3 years, almost all of these instruments will be prone to cracking as moisture are gradually released from the wooden structures. This will cause these instruments to become unplayable creating excessive noise, harder to play an yin, as well as out of alignment fan yin positions.

The mass production line owners are fully aware of this, which means from the start of the production, these instruments will not receive too much attention or necessary adjustments, after all the fate of these instruments are to be upgraded for higher price guqin, or come back to the production line for repair.

In the same batch of higher standard guqin that has the same material input, they will still be graded by the actual timbre produced in the end, and according to their merits they will be matched with a fitting grade of extras including the golden hui, jade goose feet, jade tuning pegs etc. This way, the extras will further elevate the value of the final product, to achieve its maximum potential.

To give an example, top grade old fir wood will almost always be paired with real deer antler powder, precious stone powder, real raw lacquer and other traditional hand craftsmanship, and the craftsman will definitely prefer to create the style that they are most confident in producing the best sound, to maximise both functional and aesthetic value.

and in the final batch of end products, the craftsman will select the instruments with the best timbre and ease of play to be fitted with gold hui and jade pegs, to maximise value achieved for his time investment.

Once we understand this point, we will know that to ascertain the value of a guqin, we can first observe the details of the craftsmanship, whether the shape of the curves in the guqin flows naturally, the standards of extras fitted and a host of others. This will give a rough indication of how much raw material and human capital went into the craft of the instrument, and form a basis for how much to expect for the guqin.

Functional value - ease of play

We can see from the above, material and craftsmanship can open up a guqin’s potential, but what ultimately decide how high it can reach is in its functional value and musical value. The functional value is what separates between an adequate quality guqin vs a subpar quality guqin. A guqin that is easy to play can be most enjoyable to perform on, whereas the three fundamental defects （沙音，打板，抗指）should not be part of any adequate quality guqin, because it can taint the sound also makes playing extremely difficult.

Ease of play: string height, between the string and sound board. If it is too high, then it may be painful to play pressed notes （抗指）. If it is too low, pressed notes may produced varying degrees of undesirable noise（沙音，打板）. There is a set of standard circulated on line, where 1st string 7th hui should be no higher than 7mm, 4th string 7th hui 6mm, 7th string 7th hui 5mm. In actuality, the ease of play also depends on the material and tautness of the string, so these numbers should only serve as a guide. The first guqin I purchased online had 1st string 7th hui higher than 1cm, and when I was learning 《Mist and Clould over Xiao Xiang River》there are multiple sections that require fast paced back and forth playing of the 1st string （往来吟）, which was especially tough on my first guqin. I was forced to then purchase and replace with a set of silk strings, to slightly improve the ease of play. Because the ease of play will directly impact the playing experience, this needs to be tested in person, and it is not realistic to rely on written or verbal descriptions from others. When testing to see if pressed notes are easy to play, the quality of the lacquer finish can also be tested by observing how much friction is on the surface, where only a smooth finish with little friction is indicative of a quality finish.

Musical value - responsiveness, grounded lows, rounded highs, evenness

The musical value is the next step that separates an instrument that can be used to perform on stage, vs one that can only be used for practice.

Below are what I summarised to be the key aspects to watch for:

Responsiveness: the responsiveness of sound transmission, also include the absolute volume. Good wooden material that allow sound vibration through or the instrument has been played for long time such that sound can project more easily, the responsiveness will be apparent in these cases. The thickness of the chamber walls will also directly impact the instrument’s responsiveness. Usually silk strings need to be used with a high responsiveness guqin, whereas metal strings can be used even with low responsiveness guqin.

Grounded lows: Balanced distribution of low frequency harmonics. If base frequency is strong with nearby harmonics to orderly compliment, the sound produced will be solid and grounded. Grounded lows is usually the first point to look for in higher priced guqin, as it’s indicative of greater attention placed into tuning.

Rounded highs: Balanced distribution of high frequency harmonics. Higher frequency amplitudes needs to be controlled, otherwise if noticeable spikes appears unevenly, it can often create an undesirable metal sound that is considered noise. This is not unlike the property of vinyl record sound reproduction, with rolled off highs that often give listeners a warm, sweat and rounded tonal experience.

Evenness: san yin, an yin, fan yin, all needs to maintain even volume and timbre. Whether a guqin is even will be a deciding factor for being able to be used for performance or practice. This is more difficult to achieve with consistency.