Among the Freer and Sackler Collections of the Smithsonian Institution are seven specimens of qin, a musical instrument with a long history, greatly revered, and favoured by the literati. The title of the book refers to the best known of these, a lacquered wooden qin named “Withered Wood, Dragon’s Roar,” assessed by some to be from the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). The others are an unnamed bronze qin, claimed by the donor to be from the Zhou Dynasty (770–221 BCE), an iron qin “Frosty Sky, Iron Horse” reputedly from the fourth century CE, and four other wooden qin: “Spring Breeze,” “Singing Phoenix,” “White Clouds Infuse the Melody,” and an unnamed one, all of later ages. A qin made of metal cannot produce a proper musical tone; it is made merely to imitate the elegant shape of the instrument as an art object to be admired by antique collectors but dismissed by musicians and musical scholars. “Dragon’s Roar,” however, has long aroused great interest and were examined by prominent Chinese qin scholars and performers from 1945 onward.

Yang’s book gives a thick description of these seven instruments, including their shape, measurements, construction, material, lacquering, crack pattern, and the content and calligraphic style of inscriptions. In addition, Yang exhaustively compiled documentary evidence on their provenance, literary representations and artistic depictions, and comparative look at other similarly shaped and constructed specimens, particularly those from the Palace Museum of Beijing. These are all supplemented by absolutely magnificent photographs of the instruments from different angles, and Yang’s own meticulously and finely drawn outlines of their shapes for easy comparison. Furthermore, Yang utilises technology such as infra-red photography, X-Ray, and CAT scan to reveal information hidden from the naked eye.

All the above led to persuasive dating, either to confirm the veracity of inscriptions and of other sources, or to reveal fraudulent claims implied in the inscriptions and elsewhere, some innocently erroneous, others crafted to intentionally mislead. With research that involve myriad methods and techniques, Yang attributes “Dragon’s Roar” to 1009 CE (early Song dynasty), both the bronze and iron qin are in fact examples of what Yang calls “Ming dynasty antiquarianism,” while “Spring Breeze” and “Singing Phoenix” and the unnamed qin from the latter part of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The story of how Yang determines that “White clouds infuse the melody,” made in 1921 but claimed to be much older, reads like a detective story to unravel methods of deception.

The book is organised into six chapters. The short Chapter 1 provides information on how the specimens came into the collections. Chapter 2 presents fascinating details of the eleven “ancient or antiquarian” qin, the only currently known ones that were discovered in tombs from the fifth century to the second century BCE. Most of this material has been previously reported by many scholars in China, including Yang himself in English (2016); of new interests are five qin unearthed in 2015 from a tomb whose location are far from those of earlier tombs, and dated later to the 1^st century BCE. The subsequent three chapters are devoted to what Yang calls “classical qin,” ones whose size, shape, and structure have remained largely unchanged in the last fourteen centuries or so but differ from the antiquarian specimens. These are presented loosely chronologically: chapter 3 on the oldest “Dragon’s Roar,” chapter 4 the unnamed bronze qin, and chapter 5 on the other five in the collections.

The last Chapter, which ties the direct lineage of the classical qin to the antiquarian qin, may be the most significant, and potentially controversial, to our understanding of the early historical evolution of the instrument. Yang argues that the classical qin is a direct descendent of the antiquarian qin, which irked some qin scholars in China, who have long accepted the theory, even a religious and patriotic conviction, that a template of today’s classical qin existed at least from the time of Confucius (551–479 BCE), if not earlier. They believed that, because of fundamental differences in shape and structure, the “antiquarian qin” discovered in tombs could not possibly be the direct ancestor of today’s “classical qin,” but a mere side branch. Yang however, argued persuasively to make his case, and brought up the oldest classical qin known today, the famous Shōsōin qin dated to 735 CE preserved in Nara, Japan as supporting evidence. The dispute can be resolved definitively only when future archeological discoveries reveal samples that existed during the intervening 800 or so years.

Yang’s attention goes far beyond the seven qin in the Freer-Sackler collections but traces the instrument backwards to its pre-history, as well as sideways to compare them with samples from the same period and made by the same craftsman. In the process of such research, Yang provides many fascinating supplementary information, such as the discussion of the seventeenth century Zhang family of qin makers (chapter 5) and a map of the distribution of the different places where the various editions of The Manual of Qin Types were written or published from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries (chapter 4), in order to support his dating. One must mention Yang’s line drawings, not only of the outlines of qin shapes, but also the exquisite tracing of the carved relief and lacquered decorations on the qin from the Jiuliandun tomb (chapter 2).

In order to successfully weave through his narrative and arguments, one often relies on the indispensable appendices, tables and figures, and the glossary of Chinese characters and some critical cited passages in their original Chinese for those interested and able. To keep the vast tapestry of material from a stretch of 2500 years, the Chronology helps; but those readers not familiar with Chinese history and geography will still have difficulty in navigating through the text.

The book has superb production value and the appearance of a vanity coffee-table publication, with its large format, glossy paper, remarkable photographs of the instruments and reproduction of paintings. Yet at the same time it is a serious research work with dense text, expertly copy-edited, supplemented with detailed footnotes and a comprehensive list of Works Cited. To truly follow the text, the reader would have to flip back and forth between the main text and the back material. Weighing in a hefty three and a half pounds, that is a challenge.

The Dutch Sinologist Robert van Gulik published his now classic The Lore of the Chinese Lute on the instrument qin (1940), which, through the decades, has become a must read for any serious student of Chinese music, not only for the vast information he unearthed, but also for his research methodology. Now, after 80 years, van Gulik’s classic is finally matched by Yang’s new book in his elegant writing, meticulous scholarship, and the vast scope of sources, let alone significant interpretation and original theory. Indeed the new book surpasses the old one because, in the intervening years, archeological discoveries offer new information, and scanning technology allows interior views of the instrument hitherto unknown.