Guzheng (An Asian Flash Story)
An Asian girl named Gu was born in Tang -- an Eden in East Asia.
During the first five years of Gu's life in Tang, she had a wonderful life with so many relatives around her. Her parents belong to the upper class, had a trading business and owned so many lands in the province of Tang. When the civil war broke out, Gu's parents decided to immigrate to a distant relative's house in Han, about a thousand miles away from Tang. Gu's parents owned a hundred horses with some carriages that helped them travel faster in less than a month. Most of Gu's relatives moved to Han too, but some opted to stay in Tang.
Gu, while growing up in Han, learned to play a zither. She played different classical songs using the said instrument. A zither is equivalent to a modern day-piano though it weighs only twenty to thirty pounds. Gu, at age twelve, started to compose songs and her liking for poetry made it easier for her to write lyrics.
Two decades after the civil war in Tang, Gu and her parents returned to Tang. Gu's parents want to die in their birthplace while spending their last senior years. Gu was reluctant of returning to Tang because she was distraught after learning from her parents that all her brothers and sisters were killed during the civil war. All other children and teens during the civil war did not only die because of the war, famine was another problem during those sad, chaotic years.
Upon return to Tang, their old big house was still there though ransacked. They found all windows and doors broken, and their special small room inside their house was also destroyed -- a place for meditation.
Seven years later, Gu's father died of old age. The following year, her mother died. Now, it's only Gu residing in their old house.
Having inherited many lands from her parents, she used all those lands for farming to help the less privileged. Many people expressed their gratitude to Gu for helping them earn a living.
Gu did not marry in her seventy years of stay in Tang. She only continued writing poems and songs for the people to read, sing with and enjoy.
When Gu died, the people of Tang named a zither instrument after her name... Guzheng.
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