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Cheng Yujian 成玉磵
  His zhifa only survives from Qinshu Daquan?  
There are no known historical references to Cheng Yujian1 so about all that can be said about him personally is that he must have been a Northern Song literati qin master and aesthete, probably outside the bureaucracy or only lightly attached to it, hence no official biographices. Based on his apparent relationships with people such as Su Dongpo and Zhang Minshu it seems likely that he was living in or not far from Kaifeng around the beginning of the 12th century CE, when it was the Song dynasty capital city.

Cheng is credited with at least two important qin documents

  1. Finger Techiques (指法 Zhi Fa)
    An explanation of finger techniques, included in Qinshu Daquan, Folio 8 (Qinqu Jicheng, V/157-160).
    These finger technique explanations include an unusually large amount of commentary.

  2. Qin Essay (琴論 Qin Lun)
    A lengthy essay included in Qinshu Daquan, Folio 10 (Qinqu Jicheng, V/206-8);
    This essay is discussed in QSCB, Chapter 6c7 as well as in Chapter 6b3

It is not clear how Cheng Yujian's Qin Lun survived prior to its inclusion inte Qinshu Daquan (1589). Examples of his fingering instructions can be found in some earlier printed qin handbooks, and it seems quite likely that his essay was also copied in some early handcopied qin books.

In his Explanation of You Lan Finger Techniques, Wang Mengshu sometimes quotes Cheng Yujian's fingering explanations, but gives little further information. He does say it has 29 right hand techniques, 36 left hand techniques, and covers six pages, associating it with the finger techniques in a section of Taiyin Daquanji (QQJC V/94-98) called Specific Steps for Getting Started (名數發端 Ming Shu Fa Duan), which covers 10 pages and has 45 right hand then 20 left hand plus a list of 38 shorthand forms. 2

 
Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a separate page)

1. Cheng Yujian 成玉磵
Cheng Yujian (11820.xxx) apparently lived during 1111-1117, but there seems to be no information about him other what may be in the two surviving essays mentioned here.
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2. There is also a brief quote from his Zhi Fa in Wang Shixiang's article on Guangling San.
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