Four arts

The four arts (四藝, siyi), or the four arts of the Chinese scholar, were the four main academic and artistic talents required of the aristocratic ancient Chinese scholar-gentleman. They were the mastery of the qin (the guqin, a stringed instrument, 琴), qi (the strategy game of Go, 棋), shu (Chinese calligraphy, 書) and hua (Chinese painting, 畫), and are also referred to by listing all four: . Although the individual elements of the concept have very long histories as activities befitting a learned person in ancient Chinese history, the earliest written source putting the four together is Zhang Yanyuan's 9th century Fashu Yaolu (Compendium of Calligraphy) from the Tang Dynasty. File:The Eighteen Scholars by an anonymous Ming artist 1.jpg|''Qin'' File:The Eighteen Scholars by an anonymous Ming artist 2.jpg|''Weiqi (Go)'' File:The Eighteen Scholars by an anonymous Ming artist 3.jpg|''Calligraphy'' File:The Eighteen Scholars by an anonymous Ming artist 4.jpg|''Painting'' Guqin The qin (琴) was defined as the musical instrument of the literati and represented the instrument now commonly known as the guqin, after the Chinese character qin has come to refer to other types of stringed instruments. The guqin is a seven-stringed zither that owes its invention to ancient Chinese society some 3,000 years ago. During the Imperial Chinese period, a scholar was expected to play the guqin. Guqin was explored as an art-form as well as a science, and scholars strove to both play it well and to create texts on its manipulation. As an example, Gǔqín notation was invented some 1,500 years ago, and to this day it has not been drastically changed, while modern books may contain musical pieces written and mastered more than 500 years ago. Guqin is so influential that it even made its way into space: a recording of a guqin piece named "Flowing Water" was included along with other representative music styles of the Earth's peoples on the Voyager Golden Record attached to the spacecraft Voyager launched by the United States in 1977.