From the Silk Road

[update]

This lovely old man works at the Beziklik Thousand Buddha Caves, Turpan.

While we were walking around looking at what remains of the murals there (the little that has survived the invasions, the occidental archeologists, the cultural revolution and other miscreants),we hear a beautiful string piece being played in the middle of the mountains (good acoustics).

Only after we got out of the cave, we realized it was someone who worked at the caves, possibly a guard, who was playing his rawap to pass time (and possibly impress tourists).

The man played a couple of pieces for us. Then asked us to try our hand at playing it. (Ulp). I did and failed miserably to get the one chord I kind of remembered from a couple of sessions of guitar playing. Nope, I did not play the E Minor. I just got to hold this lovely snake skin rawap and got back to making this short video.

If that doesn’t load, try this link
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* the photograph of the mural is from the wiki page.