A sheng or mouth organ. The bronze or brass wind chamber has an inscription in Chinese characters. There are seventeen bamboo pipes, three of them are silent, the others have metal free reeds fixed to their bases with black wax and tuned with small dabs of red wax. One of the two tallest pipes has a label with Chinese characters.
These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.
The database retains language taken from historical documents to help research. Please note that some records may feature language and reflect systems of thinking that are outdated and offensive. The database also includes information on objects that are considered secret or sacred by some communities.
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