China
Chinese

Wood, horsehair, metal stings, bone, reptile skin
Late -20th century
 32 inches long 5.5 inches high 4 inches wide
Chordophones – Lutes

The jing erhu is related and very similar to the erhu but has a smaller resonator and shorter neck.  It was popularized by the notable musician Wang Shaoqing (1900-1958), who used the jing erhu in jing xi, or Beijing opera starting in the 1920’s.  The word jing references ‘Beijing,’ while ‘er’ means two and ‘hu’ now means ‘fiddle.’  It is lower in pitch than the jinghu, the leading melodic instrument in the Beijing opera orchestra, but higher than the erhu and suited for underpinning the expressive female vocal lines.

This jing erhu with a hexagonal (six sided) sound box, consists of a long, round, hardwood neck that runs through a constructed hexagonal wooden resonating chamber. The front is covered with a python skin soundboard (affixed by glue). The backside of the resonator is open but adorned with a carved bone screen. Bone caps also adorn both the curved top end of the neck and the ends of the two friction tuning pegs, which are inserted through the backside of the neck. One end of each steel string is attached to and wrapped around a half wood and half metal tuning peg, while the other end terminates in a loop over a metal tailpin on the bottom side of the resonator. The top end of the vibrating segment of the strings has  an adjustable sliding nut (called qianjin) of nylon cord.  The lower end of the vibrating segment is where the two slightly different gauge strings pass over a small wooden bridge on the soundboard. The bamboo bow, has strains of horsehair attached from one end to the other, and are inserted between the two strings when played.

 It is played vertically, with the body resting on the player’s left thigh and the horsehair of the bow passing between the two strings. It previously used silk strings, but since the 1960s has more commonly used steel strings.