Dr. George Shen

At this yaji, we were honored to have Master Lu Pei Yuan (from LA) and Yin Qiying, qin friend Dr. George Shen and guitar improviser Henry Kaiser to share their music experience, and of course, their captivating music performances.
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Coincidentally, the yaji also became the occasion of a reunion for Master Lui and Dr. Shen after 50 years spent on different continents.
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Dr. George Shen, the son of 99-year old guqin master T'sar Teh-Yun, talked about Master T'sar's qin life and showed her recently published CDs, guqin scores and traditional poems. Guzheng master Yin Qiying recalled the Beijing Guqin Society yaji he attended 50 years ago.He was very articulate about the importance of continuing the tradition of guqin gatherings.
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Another of our special guests, Dr. George Shen, brought with him a very special account of the qin life of his mother, Madam T'sar Teh-Yun, a renowned qin player in Hong Kong, as well as a recent publication of Madam T'sar's elegantly written guqin scores and poems.A Ph.D. in finance, a movie director, and the editor of the biggest finance newspaper in Hong Kong, Dr. George Shen is himself a very interesting character.The meeting of Dr. Shen and Master Li after spending almost fifty years on different continents brought the gathering to a new height.Together, Dr. Shen and Master Li remembered Madam T'sar Teh-Yun's personal history with the guqin.Madam T'sar started playing guqin in her 30's and has since been playing for more than sixty years.Coincidentally, this year sees her hundredth birthday, making her the only living guqin master of her generation.Being a modest and sincere traditional Chinese lady, Madam T'sar has all her life refused to give public performances or make recordings for commercial purposes.Serving as an advisor for New-Asia College, she refused to take monetary rewards for her work and insisted on the pure purpose of qin communication to make friends.The only official recording of her playing is a non-commercial demonstration for the BBC; the remaining recordings were all made by her students for learning purposes.Madam T'sar has contributed tremendously to the guqin world by her outstanding teaching and performing.Her influence on guqin music extended as far as Japan, as she is one of the few modern qin players to have visited the country.

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Dr. Shen's account was followed by an equally significant narration by Master Yin Qiying on the Guqin Association in Beijing fifty years ago, including masters of the time, Zha Fuxi, Pu Xuezhai, and Wu Jinglüe.In view of the sad termination of the gatherings in Beijing, Master Yin was especially happy to see the number of qin friends present at this particular gathering in a foreign country.According to him, when he tried to explain his specialty fifty years ago, people used to think the guzheng was the "seven-string zither", because although the "seven-string zither" (guqin) was so heavily featured in traditional literature and poems, few people had seen it in reality.He speculated optimistically that it is not unlikely that in another fifty years the guqin would see the same level of appreciation as the guzheng does now.He was very glad to see the qin gathering tradition being continued here in North America.
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George Shen