History of Pipa

The pipa is a four-stringed Chinese instrument, belonging to the plucked category of instruments. Sometimes called the Chinese lute, this instrument have a pear-shaped wooden body.
The historical development of the Pipa begins when the earliest Chinese written texts about the pipa dated back at least to the second century. The name of the instrument pipa originally referred to two finger techniques.
The two Chinese characters p'i and p'a stood originally for the two movements, i.e. plucking the strings forwards and backwards, respectively. In the Qin Dynasty, there had been a kind of plucked-instrument, known as xiantao, with a straight neck and a round sound-body played horizontally, which is considered a predecessor of the pipa.
When the people suffered from being forced to build the Great Wall, they played the instrument to express their resentment.