#for anyone curious: the song is the theme of big fish and begonia

[heliosphere-underthesky]

Happy Lunar New Year! Welcome, Year of the Wood Dragon 2024! 🌙🐉🧧 Here's Luna all dressed up for the festivities!

Timelapse under the cut! (VOLUME WARNING)

[kukuandkookie]

I was going to reblog from OP with a joke in the tags like “Is this considered blasphemous? Because I wouldn’t be against more of this 😂” but to answer these questions:

They actually removed the strings to make it more like an erhu, which does only have two strings! But I’m sure it’s confusing for anyone who’s never seen one before ahaha. 😆

Basically, the erhu is a traditional Chinese instrument, and yeah, you kind of hold it up like a cello.

It’s actually a really cool instrument and looks like this:

One of its most famous pieces is “Horse Racing,” which the man in the Douyin video from OP is playing. This is because the erhu is known for its ability to mimic the sound of a horse neighing.

You can actually watch a performance featuring these sorts of horse sounds here:

And as a fun one, here’s a comparison of the erhu’s ability to mimic horses versus the cello’s ability to do the same: 😂

Oh, and I went through my “traditional Chinese instruments” tag, and OP has already posted a Douyin featuring “Horse Racing” and the erhu before (it even features a violin, this time played as it is meant to be played 🤣)!:

Here’s some even more “Horse Racing” covers, including an attempt by the famous violin YouTube channel, TwoSet:

Beyond “Horse Racing,” the erhu is also known for having a sort of morose, sorrowful sound, so even though “Horse Racing” is very energetic, a lot of the other erhu songs you can find feel sad, yet are just as beautiful.

I love this one:

Oh, and there’s this man named Elliott Tordo who is very popular on YouTube for his erhu covers! My favourite is his cover of the popular song “Big Fish” by the amazing singer, Zhou Shen (from the heart-wrenching animated film, Big Fish and Begonia. It’s still my favourite song of Zhou Shen’s to this day, and I’ve linked it too in case you’re curious about his singing! He’s even done live versions of it like this one here).

As for Elliott, he’s probably most famous for his anime covers, such as Inuyasha’s theme song in erhu style. But yeah, here’s a sample of his work, using his cover of “Big Fish” as an example:

So there we go! That’s a taste of what the erhu is! Like all traditional Chinese instruments (whether it’s the erhu, the guqin, the guzheng, the pipa, the dizi, the xiao, the yueqin, and so on and so forth), they’re all lovely instruments. They’re somewhat underrated internationally, mostly just in the sense they’re lesser known, so there’s a lot to explore out there!

I hope that helps answer anyone’s confusion. ^^

Playing 赛马 ("Horse Racing") on a violin as if it's an 二胡/erhu.