Gu Who?

Recently I've been taking guzheng lessons. A guzheng is a Chinese zither. If you're curious about classical Chinese instruments, there's a great comprehensive wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_instruments

I take lessons at the 中国古筝学院 (Chinese Guzheng Academy) in Causeway Bay. My teacher is from Hong Kong, and so we're both speaking Mandarin as a second language to one another, which means that there's a lot of grunting and misunderstanding. My favorite weird thing about the guzheng, is that despite the fact that an "octave" has only five notes on this instrument, it's still called a 八度音, which means "eight incremented tone" or something like that. My teacher, Kwok Wai-Sze, is not familiar with Eric Clapton; however, she thinks that my rendition of ‘今天晚上特别好’ or, 'Tonight Especially Good' (which is the best translation I can do for 'Wonderful Tonight') is lovely.

At some point, the plan is to busk around town, although there isn't much of a busking culture here at all, and I think it might actually be really illegal. In fact, it's illegal to sing or dance in MTR stations, and illegal to play music or play frisbee on beaches here. Gosh Hong Kong, what a bummer.