Qin, chess, calligraphy, painting: why the qin comes first

Suzhou, during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). A scholar's study.

By the window stands a long desk with brush, ink, paper and inkstone; the ink in the stone is not yet dry. Beside the desk is a low table, and on it lies a qin, the seven-string Chinese zither, its cloth cover half drawn back. On the wall hangs a landscape painting, the owner's own work. In the corner is a go board, the black and white stones kept in two porcelain jars whose lids have not been closed properly. Yesterday's half-finished game is still on the board.

Four things fill this room: qin, go, calligraphy, painting. The owner moves among them every day. None earns him a living, but together they make him who he is.

To call someone cultivated, Chinese people say he is accomplished in "qin, qi, shu, hua": the qin, qi (the board game known in the West as go), shu (calligraphy) and hua (painting). The order is fixed, with the qin first. Why?

When the four were named together

The phrase "qin qi shu hua", with all four together, seems to have taken shape in the Tang dynasty (618–907) and become common in the Song (960–1279).

Before that, the qin and books formed a pair. The poet Tao Yuanming (365–427), in the piece he wrote on giving up office and going home, speaks of taking pleasure in "qin and books to dispel my cares". Pairing the qin with books had been a habit since the Wei and Jin period (220–420). Go and painting each stood alone: go was counted among the "games of skill", and painting was "danqing", literally "cinnabar and azure", after the pigments. Putting all four together was a way of summing up a scholar's leisure: playing the qin, playing go, writing and painting, four things a man did not to earn a living but to cultivate himself.

From the Song onward the phrase became fixed, and it also grew. "Qin, go, calligraphy, painting, poetry, wine and tea" is a Song formula with seven items; "qin, go, calligraphy, painting, poetry, wine and flowers" is another version. But however many items were added, the first four kept their order, and the qin was always first.

What the four share is leisure. None is a practical skill for farming, fighting or governing; all take much time, and none leads directly to rank or success. A man who could do all four well showed that he had leisure, and more than that, that he spent it on the right things. For Chinese scholars leisure was not a reproach but a qualification: having it meant you need not scramble for a living, and using it well meant you were cultivated.

Why the qin comes first

Several reasons, built up over the centuries, are layered together here.

The qin is the oldest. Of the four arts, the qin has the longest history and entered the classics earliest. The very first poem of the Shijing (诗经, "Classic of Poetry"), the oldest anthology of Chinese poetry, compiled around the sixth century BCE, already says:

The lovely, gentle maiden: with qin and se we befriend her.

The Liji (礼记, "Book of Rites"), a Confucian classic on ritual and conduct, says that "a gentleman does not put away his qin and se without cause". The qin was part of a gentleman's identity, much as a wall of bookshelves might be today. Calligraphy only became an art after the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), and painting later still. Go is ancient too, but it entered the core of scholarly cultivation only in the Wei and Jin period. In seating order, seniority comes first, and the qin is the most senior.

The qin is linked with virtue. Confucians saw music as a means of moral education. The "Record of Music" chapter of the Book of Rites says that "music is the harmony of heaven and earth". The qin was the representative of yayue, the refined music of ritual. Its sound is soft, never noisy, and suited to being alone, so it was thought best able to nourish a person's character. Xi Kang (223–262), the poet and musician, wrote in his "Rhapsody on the Qin" that "among all instruments, the qin's virtue is highest". No one used the word "virtue" for the other three. No one speaks of the virtue of go or the virtue of painting. The qin is the only one of the four arts tied directly to morality.

The qin is the hardest to share. Calligraphy and painting leave works behind that can be hung up and shown to others. Go leaves a game record that can be replayed. The sound of the qin is gone as soon as the piece ends, and anyone who was not there cannot hear it. This brings the qin closest to the original meaning of self-cultivation: it is done for oneself, not for others to see. Tao Yuanming's stringless qin took this to its extreme (see The stringless qin). He did not even play it. He simply had it.

The qin is music. The Confucian "six arts" were rites, music, archery, charioteering, writing and arithmetic. Music came second, right after rites, and the qin was the representative of music. The order of the four arts carries over, to some degree, the order of the six: music comes before writing.

The nature of each art

Side by side, the four look like this.

Calligraphy is everyday life. A scholar wrote every day: letters, essays, copied texts. Calligraphy is an art that grew out of daily practice. It has the lowest threshold and was the most widespread. Many scholars could not paint, play go or play the qin; none could not write.

Painting is looking. To paint, you have to look: at mountains and water, flowers and birds, people. Painting keeps what has been seen. It faces the outside world.

Go is contest. Go needs two people. There is winning and losing, and it tests calculation and composure. It faces an opponent.

The qin is solitude. You can play the qin for others, but first of all you play it for yourself. It needs no opponent and leaves no work behind. You must be calm while playing and calm afterwards. It faces the self.

Set out like this, the qin stands apart as the only one of the four that turns inward. Calligraphy and painting turn outward, to be seen by others; go turns outward, toward one other person; the qin turns inward. Putting the inward art first reflects how Chinese scholars understood cultivation: first yourself, then others. The Daxue (大学, "Great Learning"), another Confucian classic, lays out a sequence: cultivate yourself, order your family, govern the state, bring peace to the world. Cultivating oneself comes first. The order of the four arts is a miniature of that sequence.

How the four arts were learned

The four were also learned differently, and that too is hidden in the ranking.

Calligraphy begins with copying model books. There are model texts and a teacher who corrects your work, and every stroke has a standard. Painting also begins with copying, and it too had its manuals; the Jieziyuan Huapu (芥子园画谱, "Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting") was the textbook from which people of the Ming and Qing learned to paint. Go has its game records and standard opening sequences, and it has an opponent: when you lose, you find out where you went wrong.

The qin is the hardest to learn. Jianzipu, the tablature in which qin music is written, records fingering but not rhythm, so how a piece should actually go has to be handed down by a teacher in person. Without a teacher, you cannot play a piece from the score alone. The old saying was that "the study of the qin is hard to master". The difficulty is not in the hands. It is that there is no single correct answer. The same piece taught by different teachers can come out completely different (see The schools of the guqin (in Chinese)). A student first has to find a teacher and join a lineage, and then spend many years absorbing the things in that lineage that cannot be put into words.

This is another reason the qin comes first: it depends most on people. You can teach yourself calligraphy, you can teach yourself painting, you can play go against yourself. The qin has to be taught by someone. Behind anyone who plays the qin stands a line of teachers. That in itself is what transmission looks like.

The four arts together

Although the four arts are named separately, people often practised them together.

Emperor Huizong's painting "Listening to the Qin" has a qin in it, its inscriptions are calligraphy, and the work itself is a painting: three of the four in one object. Su Shi (1037–1101) played the qin, wrote, painted and played go, of which he said, "winning is a pleasure, and losing is a pleasure too". The standard furnishing of a Ming scholar's study was a qin, a go board, brush and ink and painted scrolls: exactly the room at the beginning of this article.

The qin and calligraphy are the closest. Jianzipu is itself a kind of calligraphy. Every character in the tablature is a handwritten combination of parts of Chinese characters, and in the printed qin handbooks of the Ming and Qing, the beauty of the lettering rivals that of stone-rubbing models (see Calligraphy and the qin). The inscription by Huang Tingjian on the back of the Jiuxiao Huanpei, a famous Tang qin, is an example of the qin and calligraphy literally growing on the same object.

The qin and go are related as well. Both are about stillness, both require sitting for a long time, and both carry out something very large on a small flat surface, the face of the qin or the go board. An old saying holds that go is like the sound of the qin: the rhythm of a game and the rhythm of playing have something in common.

Does it still mean anything today

Most people who study the qin today do not play go, and they may not do calligraphy or painting either. The four arts as a standard set for one person disappeared long ago. No one lives in the study from the beginning of this article anymore.

But the judgment hidden in the ranking is still there: inward first, then outward. Qin students often say that playing is a way to "calm the heart". That is really a modern way of saying "the qin's virtue is highest". People have done this for more than two thousand years. The reasons given have changed several times, but the core has not: it makes a person quiet, and it needs no audience.

This is also why people still learn the qin today. Not because it ranks first, but because what it does cannot be replaced by anything else. You can copy calligraphy from a model book, learn painting from photographs, play go against a computer. With the qin, you can only sit down alone, make one string sound, and listen to it fade away.

For other places the qin holds in Chinese culture, in idioms and in Tang poetry, see The qin in Chinese idioms and The qin in Tang poetry.