The ''banhu'' ( 板胡,

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...

: bǎnhú) is a Chinese traditional bowed

string instrument String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner. Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the s ...

in the

huqin ''Huqin'' () is a family of bowed string instruments, more specifically, a spike fiddle popularly used in Chinese music. The instruments consist of a round, hexagonal, or octagonal sound box at the bottom with a neck attached that protrudes u ...

family of instruments. It is used primarily in northern China. ''Ban'' means a piece of wood and ''hu'' is short for ''huqin''. Like the more familiar ''

erhu The ''erhu'' (; ) is a Chinese two-stringed bowed musical instrument, more specifically a spike fiddle, which may also be called a ''Southern Fiddle'', and is sometimes known in the Western world as the ''Chinese violin'' or a ''Chinese two- ...

'' and '' gaohu'', the ''banhu'' has two strings, is held vertically, and the bow hair passes in between the two strings. The ''banhu'' differs in construction from the

in that its soundbox is generally made from a

coconut The coconut tree (''Cocos nucifera'') is a member of the palm tree family (Arecaceae) and the only living species of the genus ''Cocos''. The term "coconut" (or the archaic "cocoanut") can refer to the whole coconut palm, the seed, or the f ...

shell rather than wood, and instead of a

snakeskin Snakeskin may either refer to the skin of a live snake, the shed skin of a snake after molting, or to a type of leather that is made from the hide of a dead snake. Snakeskin and scales can have varying patterns and color formations, providing prot ...

that is commonly used to cover the faces of ''huqin'' instruments, the ''banhu'' uses a thin wooden board. The ''banhu'' is sometimes also called "banghu," because it is often used in ''bangzi'' opera of northern

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

, such as Qinqiang from

Shaanxi Shaanxi (alternatively Shensi, see § Name) is a landlocked province of China. Officially part of Northwest China, it borders the province-level divisions of Shanxi (NE, E), Henan (E), Hubei (SE), Chongqing (S), Sichuan (SW), Gansu (W), N ...

province. The '' yehu'', another type of Chinese fiddle with a coconut body and wooden face, is used primarily in southern China.

External links

Listening

Banhu MP3s
(click on headphones to listen to individual tracks)

References

Chinese musical instruments Huqin family instruments Necked bowl lutes {{huqin-stub

External links

Listening

See also

References