Tuning in to history

Ma's team has produced 44 kinds of pipa based on Zheng's research. It took them almost half of 2018 to replicate these selected instruments from the murals.

Ma's team traveled to many cities to find luthiers talented and skillful enough to reproduce these ancient instruments, which were shown to the public at the 2018 Dunhuang culture expo, and musicians playing them drew huge audiences.

In 2019, these instruments were played by musicians from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music while performing at the Chinese New Year's Concert held in Vienna, Austria.

It's not the first time that ancient musical instruments depicted in the Dunhuang murals have entertained the modern public. In 1992, Zheng and his team created some of the musical instruments, and that same year, Chinese musicians played them in Japan, but due to a lack of funding and experience, some of the instruments did not sound all that good when played.