Being a Commodity

Abstract

The qin 琴, a seven-stringed plucked musical instrument, occupies a unique status in Chinese cultural history. By the time it was established as the musical embodiment of classical tradition and literati culture in the Song dynasty, it had become an exchangeable commodity. While literary writings composed before the Song rarely focused on its monetary value, the unprecedentedly vibrant commercial world recast the qin, hitherto an aristocratic or scholarly pursuit, as a commodity that affected the life of the literati. This article examines how the literati worked through the conflicting values brought by the commodification of the qin to create and reinterpret its new meaning as an object with both cultural and monetary value. The commercial mechanism that the literati took part in also brought about changing characterizations in the connoisseurship of the qin. The astute perception of sound was no longer the sole criterion for appraisal, which now included familiarity with the qin’s physicality and knowledge of its craftsmanship. Behind the ostensible monopoly of the literati discourse on the qin, there was an economic and social network in which different groups participated—groups that together defined the cultural and commercial values of the qin.