When a 3,000-Year-Old Instrument Plays a Pop Drama Theme

Cultural Context

A Pop Song Meets China’s Oldest Instrument

“Mao Buyi’s voice made me cry. But this guqin version made me understand the song.” That’s one of the top comments on this video — and it captures exactly what makes this performance special.

The song is Bu Ran (不染, “Untainted”), the theme from Ashes of Love (香蜜沉沉烬如霜), one of China’s biggest fantasy dramas in 2018. The original, sung by Mao Buyi, is a plaintive power ballad about a love that persists across lifetimes despite fate’s cruelty.

But when Bai Wuxia of Zi De Guqin Studio transcribed it for solo guqin, something shifted. The vocal drama was gone. In its place rose something quieter — a meditation that doesn’t tell you how to feel, but gives you space to feel it yourself.

The Drama Behind the Song

Ashes of Love tells the story of Jinmi, a flower deity’s daughter fed an “love-repellent pill” at birth to protect her from the devastations of romance. Of course, she falls in love anyway — with Xufeng, the Fire God — and the result is three lifetimes of yearning, betrayal, and sacrifice.

The lyrics of Bu Ran mirror this arc: “Unwilling to be tainted by right and wrong, yet things never go as planned. The flower in my heart withers, and time cannot return.” The word “bù rǎn” itself — roughly “untainted” or “unstained” — is both a wish and an irony. The characters strive to remain untouched by the world, yet every choice draws them deeper in.

What the Guqin Does Differently

Here’s what makes the guqin version feel so different from the original:

No words, more space. Without lyrics telling you exactly what to feel, the emotion becomes yours to project. The guqin’s characteristic silences between notes — sometimes called “the sound before the sound” — create room for your own thoughts.

Three voices in one instrument. The guqin produces three distinct timbres: san yin (open strings, deep and resonant), fan yin (harmonics, ethereal and bell-like), and an yin (stopped notes, expressive and human). Bai Wuxia shifts between them like a storyteller changing perspective — from the weight of destiny to the whisper of a private thought.

Restrained intensity. As one listener put it: “The guqin version’s brilliance lies in its restraint. It doesn’t pour out emotion; it holds it back, and in that holding-back, gives the listener more freedom.”

Who Is Bai Wuxia?

Bai Wuxia is a core member of Zi De Guqin Studio, a Shanghai-based collective of young musicians founded in 2014. She started as a materials science student with a childhood obsession with wuxia novels and video games. After discovering the guqin, she trained under Liang Huijun and Tang Bin, eventually joining Zi De and becoming one of its most recognizable faces.

Her specialty is exactly this kind of crossover — taking pop songs, drama themes, and even video game soundtracks and arranging them for guqin. Her version of Zuo Shou Zhi Yue (Left Hand Points to the Moon) earned 460,000 likes on YouTube. She doesn’t see this as diluting tradition; she sees it as meeting audiences where they are.

The Guqin: 3,000 Years of Weight

To understand why a guqin cover hits differently, you need to know the instrument’s cultural baggage — in the best sense.

The guqin is a seven-stringed zither with over 3,000 years of documented history. It was In 2003, UNESCO inscribed guqin music on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Confucius played it. It tops the “four arts of the Chinese scholar” (qin, chess, calligraphy, painting). In Chinese literature, the guqin appears not as entertainment, but as a vehicle for self-cultivation and communion with the Dao.

Its construction is cosmological: the top board is rounded like the sky; the bottom is flat like the earth. The 13 mother-of-pearl inlays along the side represent the 13 months of the lunar year. Even the descriptive names for its sounds — “dragon’s growl,” “crane’s cry,” “flowing water” — connect the instrument to the natural world.

So when those ancient strings wrap around a modern pop melody, you’re hearing two timelines collide: the intimacy of a 2018 TV drama and the accumulated weight of three millennia.

Why This Version Went Viral

The video has resonated especially strongly with international audiences. Comments roll in from listeners who stumbled upon it with no knowledge of the drama or the instrument:

• “I don’t speak Chinese but I felt every note.”
• “This is what music sounded like before the world got loud.”
• “I came for the drama OST, stayed for the guqin rabbit hole.”

That’s the alchemy of what Zi De Guqin Studio does. They don’t just preserve tradition — they translate it. And sometimes, a 3,000-year-old instrument speaking a modern pop language is the most universal thing you can hear.