Chengdu's most famous love story comes from the second century BC. Sima Xiangru, a poet and musician of the Western Han, played the seven-stringed zither - the qin - at the house of a wealthy family and, by playing, persuaded the widowed daughter of the house, Zhuo Wenjun, to elope with him. They ran a wine shop together in Chengdu, and the story became a stock reference in Chinese poetry for romantic love and for a marriage made against family approval. The platform on which he was said to have played is the qin tai, and the street that carries the name runs through western Chengdu.
The street
Qintai Road is a modern construction in a historic manner: a broad street of buildings in a simplified Han and Tang style, with timber frames, tiled roofs, elaborately carved screens and lanterns, laid out as a shopping street. What it sells fits the story - musical instruments including guqin and guzheng, jewellery, jade and gold, tea and teaware, antiques and curio, Sichuan opera costumes and embroidery, and restaurants with performers. It is a commercial street rather than a heritage site, and it is best understood as such; the attraction is the atmosphere in the evening, when the lanterns are lit, live music drifts out of the teahouses and the whole street is full of people.
The qin itself
The instrument the street is named after is China's oldest classical string instrument, a long, unfretted board zither with seven strings played by plucking, with a range of techniques and a notation system that has been used for well over a thousand years. It has been the instrument of scholars and poets rather than of entertainers, and the repertoire is meditative, quiet and technically difficult; UNESCO recognised the guqin and its music as intangible cultural heritage. Chengdu, and Sichuan more broadly, is one of the places where the instrument is still taught and where workshops make it.
Practical notes
Qintai Road is in the western part of the centre, next to the Qingyang Taoist temple and the Cultural Park, which makes it easy to combine with either. It is open and walkable at all hours, with the shops busiest in the late afternoon and evening. Live performances in the street's teahouses usually start after dark and are inexpensive. If you want to hear the guqin played properly rather than as background music, ask at an instrument shop, or look for a recital at the city's conservatory or concert halls, where traditional Chinese music programmes are frequent.
