Chinese music is often grouped by how it is made - sung, danced, narrated, staged, or played. These six entries are the groupings this site uses to get you oriented.
This grouping is the framework this site uses to help you get oriented. It is not the only way Chinese music is classified, and different sources divide it differently.Genre photographs are illustrative: they show a related practice, not evidence for any statement about the genre. Detailed genre pages do not exist yet.
Older Chinese writing groups instruments by the material they are made from - metal, stone, silk, bamboo, gourd, clay, hide and wood. It is a different question from "how is it played", and the two systems do not line up neatly.
That is the interesting part: the same instrument can be described in more than one way depending on which tradition of classification you are using.
金Metal
Bells, and later gongs and cymbals
石Stone
Chime stones
丝Silk
Stringed instruments, from silk strings
竹Bamboo
Flutes and pipes
匏Gourd
Reed instruments with a gourd wind chest
土Clay
Vessel flutes such as the xun
革Hide
Drums
木Wood
Slit drums and percussion blocks
The eight-sounds system is not a parent category above the four families above, and the modern grouping is not simply a later form of it. They answer different questions.
