Mute Strings

A thousand years for the pipa, ten thousand for the zither; one erhu takes a lifetime to master. Life is like an erhu. It has two strings: one is your fate, the other your soul. Fate without a soul is just a mute string. Jiang Yubai, a first-year student at Yanyin University, is an emotionless performance machine. He placed first nationwide on his way into the string department. At the welcome gala’s most important performance, he takes the final spot on stage and smashes a violin worth six hundred thousand yuan. Halfway through his performance, an old voice suddenly speaks in his mind, teaching him a fingering technique he has never learned. Because it isn’t violin vibrato. It’s the erhu’s rolling vibrato. From that night on, he can always hear the voice. An old man has moved into his body, teaching him how to hold the instrument and draw the bow, and constantly murmuring one thing in his ear: “Don’t let it... go mute again.” This world is missing the 48 seconds of “Moon Reflected on the Second Spring.” It is missing Liu Tianhua, and all the Chinese folk music that should have been heard. The old man inside him spent half a lifetime in another world writing an encyclopedia of folk music called Mute Strings, yet never managed to play a single piece. A young man who has lost his soul and is sensitive to sound. An old man who has lost his life and is a master of folk music. These two strings, mute for far too long, are about to ring out once more in this world with an immortal melody...