Stone, widely available and highly durable, is an excellent construction material. What many people may not know, however, is that there are musical instruments made from it too.
In China, stone is one of the eight categories under the bayin – the classification of musical instruments based on the materials they were traditionally made from.
Some of the categories under the bayin, such as bamboo and silk, have a variety of musical instruments. For instance, the silk category includes the guqin – a zither that is plucked – as well as the erhu, played with a bow and likened to a Chinese violin.
When it comes to stone, there is no such diversity. Most of these instruments are percussion instruments known as lithophones. The word for lithophone in Chinese is qing.
