Hui Folk Instrumental Music (Kouxian and Niwawu)

Hui folk instrumental music circulates throughout the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and scholars trace its kouxian, niwawu and mimi to ancient Han- and Tang-dynasty instruments—the reed jaw harp, the clay ocarina (xun), the Qiang flute and the lu pipe—some forms reaching back to the Western Xia period. It entered the first national ICH list in 2006 under traditional music.

The kouxian is a bamboo or iron reed held between the lips and teeth and plucked, its pitch shaped by the mouth's resonance, with a clear bright tone; the niwawu is a hollow clay body with finger-holes, blown for a deep archaic sound; and the mimi, in many forms, is a double-pipe vertical flute. All three serve the Hui people for self-amusement and the sharing of feeling.

Hui folk instrumental music carries the thousand-year lineage of the northwest's ancient instruments, a living fossil for the study of how China's ethnic instruments evolved and of Hui musical culture, vital to sustaining Hui folk life and its musical tradition.