Tale of the Pipa

[5][6][7] Gao reportedly composed The Lute over a three-year period of solitary confinement, locking himself in an attic room and wearing down the floorboards by tapping out the rhythms of his songs.

[2][8] The Lute won considerable critical acclaim amongst Gao's contemporaries, since it raised the popular but somewhat rustic form of Southern folk opera (Nanxi) to a higher literary standard, and it became a model for Ming dynasty theatre.

[11] This version, titled Le Pi-pa-ki ou l'Histoire de Luth, was published in Paris in 1841 by the Imprimerie Royale.

[15] Memoirs of the Guitar, published in Shanghai in 1928,[16] is an English-language novel self-described as "A Novel of Conjugal Love, Rewritten from a Chinese Classical Drama".

[17] A 1946 American musical comedy based on the Chinese play, titled Lute Song, was written by Will Irwin and Sidney Howard.