Hua Yanjun (1893 -1950)

Hua Yanjun, more commonly known as A Bing, was born in Wuxi in 1893 and learned how to play a variety of Chinese instruments, including the erhu, when he was a child. His most famous erhu work is Moon Reflected in the Second Spring.

As a blind street musician living in a period of war and misery, his profound knowledge of traditional music and his musical talent went unnoticed until the last year of his life in 1950, shortly after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, when two musicologists visited his hometown of Wuxi to record his music. At the time he was already very sick and hadn't played any music for nearly two years. Luckily, the musicologists were able to persuade him to play. In the end, only three of his pipa solos and three of his erhu solos were recorded, all of which are now considered masterpieces of the traditional repertoire. It is said that Hua had a repertoire of over 700 pieces, most of which were self-composed.