What is shaped like a pear and has strings that produce music? Definitely not the guitar. Though with strings which one could pluck to produce pleasant sounds, the guitar is more shaped like an 8 or a bitter gourd. The four-stringed Chinese musical instrument, pipa 琵琶 is pear-shaped. So is the liuqin 柳琴 which is the smaller version of the pipa and a host of other stringed musical instruments in East Asia and South East Asia such as the Japanese biwa, the Vietnamese đàn tỳ bà, and the Korean bipa, all believed to be the derivatives of the Chinese pipa. Pipa reportedly has been popular for thousands of years; and still is. Most of the time though, I just see young ladies playing the instrument in TV and so it was a surprise when someone sent a video clip featuring a man playing the instrument.
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