End of GuzhengAlive Updates

Dear friends of the global Guzheng community. It is with a heavy heart I write this. I am formally ending work on my beloved GZA.

For those who have been watching the size of my updates decreasing, you have likely suspected. I want to confirm and say goodbye.

Over the last several years I have suffered several brain injuries. I can no longer listen to nor play music without pain. Using technology has become a devil’s bargain of symptoms that can last as long as weeks. My language skills are diminished. Memories don’t form the way they used to, and some times they don’t form at all.

After each injury I spent months in recovery, slowly regaining the losses, working myself up to getting back into the swing of things… and then another one happened. I steel myself, I start again… and then another. I can’t, anymore. I need to step promising myself a capacity that may never return.

In addition to my injuries various personal life changes and challenges have made it difficult to maintain the collection of guzheng that were the basis for my observations and photography for much of the site. I have sold or given away about half the collection, and it is time to pass on the rest. If you have an interest in a damaged key changing guzheng, or aged and damaged representations of early southern style please do email me at guzhengalive@gmail.com. I also have at east one higher end zheng from Taiwan that needs a good home, and some other playable, but middle-condition uncommon zheng. If you do write please be patient as it takes me some time to respond.

For those concerned- I did contact area museums to offer them as donations. The few that responded declined, citing a lack of space for such bulky items. I firmly believe that at its height, this collection was the largest, most broadly historical one of its kind that is both in the United States and not tied to a store. Perhaps I overestimate it- but truly, it was something special. Yet the museums did not want it. And so I’d like to stop hoarding them and get them into the arms of people who will appreciate them. Please do contact me, and hopefully in the months or years to come. I can offer photos and we can coordinate shipping.

Time gets away from us. Health gets away from us. Things change. That is the universal truth. As is loss. I have been grappling with this, and will for some time. So I want to recognize and celebrate something I never got to publicize - my last great trip.

In 2024 I had the incredible fortune to run into two skilled musicians on an island off the cost of India. (A sentence I never thought I would write.) Once we revealed who we each were (over a buffet breakfast - I still remember your face when I told you both XD) you insisted you take me everywhere guzheng related in Singapore, our next destination. We were in both places due to the nature of our work and a common acquaintance (I wish to maintain some privacy here) and I, with some apprehension, agreed.

What then followed was a whirlwind of kindness and adventure. What I had intended to be a relatively calm visit to a library in my off hours turned, in retrospect, into an incredible goodbye tour. You got me access to proprietors and designers the likes of which I had only ever admired from afar. Sitting across from a guzheng designer in a tea room while a new friend translated for us… it was such an honor. It felt both tangible and completely impossible.

Your network of connections stood in as introductions, endorsements, and translators. When conversations failed you re-energized them with passion and fortitude. You and your compatriot both were phenomenonal companions.

Behind the scenes though, I was struggling. I was not sleeping much, a consequence of past injuries. When I got home I had a mountain of interviews that you facilitated, and… I couldn’t go back through them. It was too exhausting. I did, for the record, force out a write up with one proprietor and sent it to him to review for any factual errors before I published, and followed up with a second, but… I never heard back. I was torn between wanting to respect the interview subjects and not publish without their approval, and my own need to make something happen while I still had energy. But I ran out, and never published.

To everyone who gave me time in Singapore, and such respect and kindness, thank you and I am sorry. I feel I have let you down. Despite everything you all made happen, I was unable to complete my end of the bargain and share those interviews more widely.

I have sustained further injuries since then, putting that work even farther out of reach. Writing this in the wake of my latest I am preparing to limit technology usage to what is required for me to work and connect with the people close by.

I will be okay. I will find other communities and ways to engage with the world around me. But my life will be different and necessarily smaller.

And that brings us to what happens with this site.

For the moment, I will continue to pay the hosting costs. Years ago you generous readers donated enough to pay the hosting costs for 3 years, and I never spent any of it. One that is gone, I don’t know. If readership declines I will likely stop paying for this. If it stays strong and I have the budget, perhaps I keep it up.

If anyone wants to carry the torch, please, contact me. I would love to see this live on. For every page that is public is a draft for another that is not. There is so much farther this could go! But I know the odds are, it will not continue. This would not be the first passion project that disappeared into the internet, and it won’t be the last.

And so, for at least 3 years, please get the most out of this you can. This is, truly, my life’s greatest work. I am proud to have built this. I am honored by so may people offering their stores of impact, and the meaning this unlocked for them. I never could have dreamed, when I first started with a brief one-pager about the instrument that I loved, that it would ever turn into something as incredible as this. Gosh I still feel that spark! But so I have for the last several years. It’s time.

Thank you, everyone. Please take care of yourselves. Share your passions, love your cultures, and above all, be kind to each other. It means the world.

-JB