A staff member played “Moli Hua (Jasmine Flower), a popular Chinese folk song, using the replica of a 2800-year-old instrument in Jinguo Museum of Shanxi peovince on Nov 21. The polyphonic musical instrument is called Bells (bianzhong) of Marquis Su of Jin (Jin Hou Su).
The instrument consists of 16 bronze bells varying in size with the largest at 52cm in height to the smallest at 22cm, hung in a wooden frame and struck with a mallet. A total of 355 characters were engraved on these Bianzhong with sharp tools, the story of Marquis Su.
Two Bianzhong bells were unearthed from Marquis Su’s tomb in Shanxi Province in the early 1990’s and kept in the museum.
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