Drum is one of the earliest percussion musical instruments appeared in China. According to the legends, Emperor Huang ever killed the crocodiles to make drum. In modern China, a series of historic relics are unearthed, indicating that China has used drum as early as in the remote age. Foreigners who attend to school to study Chinese culture will know drum is also one of the musical instruments widely used the most in China. The drum had various usages in ancient times, playing an essential role in sacrifice ceremony and dancing.
In addition, the drum itself was an important rite in ancient times. For example, in Qing Dynasty, drum was beaten when it came to the important ceremonies. In addition, drum also has the functions of giving the correct time and giving an alarm. If you often see Chinese movies about the ancient wars when you are learning Mandarin Chinese, you can see drum functioned as the signal of attack as well as the encouragement of the soldiers in the wars. The set phrase Yi Gu Zuo Qi you may learn in Chinese language implies the importance of drum in the battlefield.
In modern time, the application of drum becomes more widely so that many activities can’t do without the drum instruments such as the ethnic bands, folk instrumental music ensemble as well as all kinds of operas, art forms and dancing. Of course, the classification of drum is also rich and diverse. The commonly seen ones might be the waist drum, Jie drum, Lang drum, Yu drum and bronze drum and so on.
Erhu is the representative of the string musical instruments. It is famous for the two-stringed bowed instrument and it also named as Huqin, Erxian and Huhu. According to the research, the original form of Erhu might be Xiqin, a kind of musical instruments played by the northern ethnic people Xixi in the late Tang Dynasty. When you learn Chinese in China, you should know the appearance of the horsetail bow in Song period made it replace Jiqin that played by bamboo friction.
After the period of the 1950s, many other classifications of Erhu are reformed into application such as high pitch Erhu, middle pitch Erhu and low pitch Erhu. The music played by Erhu makes people feel sad. The Moon over a Fountain is regarded as the most music in China created by the folk musician Hua Yanjun.