Chinese traditional musical instrument guangling qin pai 12th generation master Tian Quan from Yangzhou visited the Chinese Corner held by the Confucius Institute of the University of Latvia

November 13, 2014, there was a special event held by the Confucius Institute of the University of Latvia in the Chinese restaurant in Riga “The Great China Wall”. This time the theme of the event was Chinese traditional musical instrument called guqin, master Tian Quan not only offered Latvian students who study Chinese a vivid musical performance, but also earnestly answered their questions. The atmosphere of the event was really warm. This event was also supported by the Chinese Embassy in Latvia, Chinese association in Latvia and the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Latvia. In total there were more than 50 people attending this event, including teachers from the Confucius Institute and all the Chinese fans in Riga.
Chinese corner in the restaurant “The Great China Wall” has already been organized for many times, its main purpose is to offer Latvian students who study Chinese an opportunity to enhance their oral language skills and to set up a Chinese-Latvian culture exchange platform. Many Latvian students not only raise their Chinese language level, but establish friendship with Chinese people. This time the main purpose of the event was to participate in the lecture about Chinese traditional musical instrument guqin and to enjoy together with teachers and other students the special spirit and temperament of master Tian Quan’s one hour long guqin performance. All the students attentively listened to the master Tian Quan’s explanations about the art of guqin. After the performance, students gathered around the guqin and tried to play it asking all kinds of questions using not-so-fluent Chinese. Chinese guqin art is one of the “Four Arts of the Chinese Scholar”, its cultural history is really long, and it had been one of the required obligatory courses of ancient Chinese scholars. However, nowadays there are less and less people who study guqin art in China, so it has become one of the UNESCO intangible cultural heritages. That is why to have an opportunity to hear such a wonderful performance of nearly forgotten art seems so interesting to the students.
After the performance, students together with native Chinese discussed different topics regarding Chinese folk music. Everybody was eating Chinese snacks and speaking in Chinese, thus turning the small Chinese Salon into one big Chinese-Latvian family where one can laugh and sing as much as he likes.