I call this book the “Magic Konghou Book”, and this scholarly work symbolizes historic, artistic, and extremely high level musical culture. The book was given to me as a personal gift during a stormy night in Beijing when I was invited to the authentic and cozy music studio of a great musician we called “Phoenix”.

We gave her the English name of Phoenix because the top of her instrument is adorned with the beautiful head of that mythical bird of legend.
I was amazed that she had planned a private concert just for me – “the visiting American musician”. At that time, it was my understanding that the book was never published, and instead, only a limited number of copies were given away as gifts.

For me, this extremely rare book has always been a priceless treasure which chronicles the development of this ancient instrument, into the modern version we know today. I have been around some amazing musicians and artists in my life, but Phoenix was a remarkable, world class musician, and her book, as I understood, was written when she was only somewhere around age eighteen. Her music, focus, dedication, and scholarly high level artistic commitment is quite uncommon. I will always cherish that friendship, and because of our brief interactions, her energy pushed me into an entirely higher artistic level than I ever was before.