Reported by:CHINA TIMES https://chinatimes.com.hk/20240225/84616
Due to the pandemic over the past few years, guzheng virtuoso Dr. Lunlun Zou hasn’t returned to Australia – a place she calls her “maternal home” – for quite some time. This familiar country, this familiar city, is where she once studied, lived, grew, and performed. In the Lunar New Year of 2024, she made a special trip from Hong Kong to Australia with her beloved guzheng. In Australia, as a famous Guzheng Virtuoso Dr.Lunlun Zou engaged in musical exchanges with audiences and fans on multiple occasions, making friends through the sound of her instrument. In Australia, she welcomed the Chinese New Year with a guzheng performance, bringing a warm festive atmosphere to her friends in Sydney, and her stunning solo guzheng performance captivated everyone present.
Over the years, in Hong Kong, the Greater Bay Area, Japan, and even New York, Toronto, and Australia, Zou Lunlun has been invited as a VIP performer for various major festival celebrations. She frequently tours the world’s top concert halls, winning applause from audiences worldwide with her lavish and gentle playing style. She occasionally holds concerts in places such as the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, City Hall, the Jockey Club Auditorium at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and the West Kowloon Xiqu Centre, bringing musical feasts to all sectors of Hong Kong. She helps raise funds for students from low-income families, offers free “Love for Music” courses, and takes her students to perform in various communities. In those significant commemorative days and festival celebrations of Hong Kong, Dr. Lunlun Zou and her guzheng are always there, filling the air with the melodious sounds plucked from her strings.
In large charitable fundraising events like “Love and Joy Spread to Thousands of Homes” and “Brilliant Stars Shine for Po Leung Kuk”, broadcasted by TVB and held in the Hong Kong Coliseum, Lunlun spares no effort to perform live and interact with the citizens of Hong Kong, using her strength to promote mutual aid and friendship in society. Whether it’s a large event at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, a Chinese award ceremony, or a fundraising dinner at the Polytechnic University, Lunlun and her guzheng are there whenever needed.
Bringing joy to everyone and spreading culture and music has always been her life philosophy. Her audience includes many political figures and celebrities, such as former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, and former New Zealand Prime Minister Jenny Shipley, among others.
From a young age, Lunlun was accustomed to the company of her guzheng, with its beautiful and dazzling strings never leaving her side, fully expressing the joy of life. This is her true life companion, through which she has dedicated her life to spreading joy, sincere friendship and love.
Sitting in front of the guzheng and plucking its strings, she brings forth melodious sounds as powerful as surging waves and as elegant as a gently flowing stream. With her music, Dr.Zou accompanied by her expressive body movements, fully immerses the audience in the story of the music.
In North Point on Hong Kong Island, there is a “Dr. Lunlun Zou International Academy for Music & Arts“ where elegant guzheng music can be heard from time to time. The two-story, 180-square-meter music room hosts large class teachings on the first floor and video recording, rehearsals, and calligraphy courses on the second floor. Dr. Zou and her students often express their emotions through music here, using the guzheng to narrate their feelings, plucking the strings to tell tales of joy, and performing the stories of life.
Despite her fame on the world stage, Dr. Zou remains committed to education, teaching the art of guzheng to young people in Hong Kong, China, and around the world, promoting Chinese culture. She is also keen on participating in charity performances, bringing love and care to society.
The renowned Chinese composer Xian Xinghai once said: “Music is the greatest joy in life; music is a clear stream in life.” That is to say, only with music can life be filled with joy, and only with music can life flow clearly. At that moment, the soul is purified.
Lunlun Zou is in such a state of blending scenarios and being present both in body and mind. She plays “General’s Order” on the guzheng. The general, coming from the battlefield on horseback, with an air of dust and the majesty of a returning ruler, is vividly depicted in the sounds of the guzheng and her physical expression. She uses the guzheng to narrate “Lotus Emerging from Water” (a very famous Hakka guzheng piece that conveys profound and implicit meaning). From objects to people, it employs scenes to express emotions. After one piece, the music is fresh, smooth, beautiful, and pleasant to listen to, bringing enjoyment to the listener.
In Lunlun’s view, to have music as a companion in life is to have music accompany life itself. This is because behind every good piece of music, there’s a story, and sometimes it’s the main theme of life itself. She leads the audience to fully engage in the music performance process, with the performer fully investing themselves, expressing the dynamics of light and heavy, slow and fast, subdued and emphatic with expressive power and rich connotations. Achieving unity of heart and hand, and moving effortlessly with the ups and downs of the melody, it is the heart that moves, expressing truth.
She says that playing a piece of music is like interpreting a segment of life, or a condensed story. This feeling, where the scene merges with the music and the person becomes one with the melody, accumulates over time and greatly refines a person’s cultivation and understanding.
Unlike those who grew up coddled in sweetness, Lunlun was immersed in music from a young age. Born into a musical family, her elders were outstanding guzheng educators and performers. She is already the fourth generation to carry on this tradition.
She started learning the guzheng at the age of 3, and from the ages of 5-6, she began formal study of pieces and practice, being required to practice several hours every day. At 12, she was admitted to the Shenyang Conservatory of Music’s affiliated middle school for professional music education, and at 18, she entered the Shenyang Conservatory of Music with excellent grades and went abroad to study after graduation, walking the path of musical art.
What truly made Lunlun recognize the charm of Chinese culture in the guzheng in her hands was during her years studying abroad. It was in Western countries that this 2,500-year-old Chinese guzheng, along with its melodious sounds, brought her unlimited life gains and a colorful life.
In 1995, during the Asian Arts Festival held by the New Zealand government’s official residence, Lunlun was invited to perform on stage representing Asians. In Wellington, on the distant Southern Hemisphere, a guzheng brought the heavenly sound of Eastern art, and the sound of the Chinese instrument was sensational. Since then, in a foreign land, whenever there was an event related to Chinese culture, the organizers would think of Lunlun Zou.
Because of that enchanting guzheng, she, still a student, was hired by the University of Wellington as a part-time lecturer on Eastern music, cultivating a large number of students and overseas Chinese children enthusiastic about learning the guzheng and Eastern music.
During the Genghis Khan relics exhibition held by the Inner Mongolia Museum of China in New Zealand, Lunlun was invited to tour with the exhibition, playing Inner Mongolian folk songs on the guzheng such as “Beautiful Grassland, My Home,” “Gada Meilin,” and “Night on the Grassland,” like a clear spring flowing into the heart, bringing overseas Chinese and foreign friends into the endlessly charming Mongolian grasslands. The audience was collectively moved by the deep and distant sound penetrating the soul, allowing the diverse ethnic cultures of China to shine brightly in New Zealand.
In 1996, two solo concerts held at the University of Wellington were sold-out, her personal guzheng performance CD was a hot seller, and music enthusiasts sought her out to become her disciples. Such scenes were common for Lunlun during her years of study in New Zealand and Australia. She deeply understood this to be the charm of Chinese culture, the captivating penetration of music, and the vision of pursuing a joyful life.
In recent years, Lunlun’s guzheng performances have resonated in places such as Hong Kong, Japan, Canada, the United States, and Sydney. Her concerts, seminars, and teaching have attracted significant attention from the music community. On June 30, 2013, she successfully held the “Crossing” Guzheng and Erhu Concert at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, featuring the French erhu master Guo Gan. Since then, she embarked on a “Crossing” journey, leaving her mark in many countries. By intertwining ancient and modern, as well as Eastern and Western string music cultures, she received high praise from various sectors in Hong Kong. She played a significant role in conveying and deepening the understanding of Chinese traditional arts and culture to the younger generation in Hong Kong and people around the world, earning the reputation as one of the most influential female musicians of modern times.
Dr. Lunlun Zou has received numerous accolades for her outstanding contributions to ethnic music, including the title of Fellow from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the Annual Asian Art Leader Award from the Outstanding Enterprise and Leader Selection, the Fourth World Outstanding Chinese Artist Award, and she has also been appointed as a jury member of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, among other awards and appointments.
Driven by her passion for music, a sense of mission for the heritage of art and culture, and relentless effort and pursuit, Lunlun has traveled from one country to another— the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Europe, and other places around the world—promoting Chinese ethnic culture. Moreover, she has taken it as her mission to nurture the younger generation, using music as a bridge to foster friendship and understanding among people.
