Molly O’Connor/Winonan

According to Gao Hong, there is a certain romance to the music of the hulusi.

“It’s always said you can get a girlfriend or boyfriend based on how well you play the hulusi,” Hong said.

Carlton College student Vicky Wu was taking the Performing Arts Center Recital Hall stage and preparing to play the hulusi, a wind instrument resembling a gourd.

Wu smiled at the audience.

“Anyone want to date me?” Wu asked. Then she swiftly began to the play the instrument, entrancing the audience in a melody of wavering notes.

Hong, a performer and composer of the Chinese lute known as the pipa, a four-stringed, pear-shaped instrument that resembles a guitar, performed at Winona State University on Thursday.

The performance was part of the International Music Series.

Hong’s music was a showcase of traditional and modern Chinese music and the instruments required to make the sounds of China come alive.

The show opened with three students each performing a mix of traditional and contemporary Chinese music. The other instruments that were featured during the show were the erhu, a traditional instrument resembling a violin, and the guzheng, a plucked zither with 21 strings.

As the students finished their performances, Hong took the stage herself.

Born in Luoyang, Henan, Hong started to play the pipa at the early age of 12.

She graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she studied with Lin Shicheng, a great pipa master.

After moving to the United States in 1994, Hong continued her journey as a pipa player with a new audience.

Although she was receiving great recognition internationally, Hong felt a sadness in moving away from her family and being a professional pipa player, a story told through her own piece of music titled “Flying Dragon.”

“It’s my identity,” Hong said. “I was born in the year of the dragon, and when I was a child, my mother took me to a fortune teller, who said that I was a flying dragon. I will never settle down, and I will keep moving.”

Hong demonstrated the sounds a pipa could make to tell a story.

The pipa that Hong played was custom-made specifically for her, with an ivory peony resting at the top of the neck.

“I can imitate the sound of a horse and play music simultaneously,” Hong said, plucking the strings to recreate the clopping sounds of a horse as her other hand moved swiftly around the neck of the pipa. Other sounds Hong demonstrated were that of bubbling water and wind.

The music Hong plays holds a special place in her heart, and she strives to capture the true emotions of the music through the pipa.

“People ask me if I feel tired in my fingers or if I feel tired in my body after I play, and I always say that I feel tired in my heart,” Hong said. “I want to play music with my heart, and so my heart always feels tired.”

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