The Geographer's Library

Jon Fasman
Item 8: A sheng, also called a “Chinese mouth organ.” Generally, a
sheng has between 13 and 17 pipes of different lengths mounted together
onto a gourd- or drum-shaped base (although Fong Yu-T’sai, an eccentric
nobleman from Guangzhou, constructed a plan for a sheng made of 75,346
tree-size pipes mounted around his home city). Each pipe has a free reed, and
sound is produced by blowing through a single mouthpiece while covering
circular holes cut into each pipe (in the case of Fong’s city-size instrument,
the wind itself would have produced the sound, and less fortunate villagers
would have filled the holes).
This particular sheng had 16 bamboo pipes around a hollow gourd
plated with gold; a thin gold band surrounded the pipes 13.5 centimeters up
from the gourd. The sheng itself was 36 centimeters from its lowest point to
its highest and had a diameter of 12 centimeters at its base.
Again we find an affinity between alchemy and music, and not surprisingly
it involves air, the lightest and most ethereal of the elements. A mastery of air is
said to produce unity and affinity among warring or incompatible substances,
just as music soothes the proverbial breast. Alchemists frequently kept wind
instruments to remind them that mastery requires more precision than power.
Date of manufacture: Early Song dynasty, which roughly corresponds
to the period between the tenth and twelfth centuries a.d. inclusive.
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