Seven Chapters of Bamboo: Seven Poems, Seven Movements, One Life in Bamboo
Grandevity Studio presents Seven Chapters of Bamboo, a seven-movement musical suite built entirely from seven original bamboo poems by Qing-dynasty poet, painter and calligrapher Zheng Xie, also known as Zheng Banqiao. No new lyrics, modern rewriting or repeated lyric lines are added. Set to a premium early-2000s Taiwan/Hong Kong Mandopop Neo-Soul cinematic sound at 72 BPM in 6/8, the work moves through Art, Wind, Backbone, People, Integrity, Return and Inheritance.
A bamboo stalk can simply be bamboo.
In the hands of Zheng Xie, it can become an entire life.
It can represent forty years of artistic discipline.
A body that faces violent wind without breaking.
Roots gripping fractured rock.
The suffering of ordinary people heard through bamboo outside a county office.
A clean departure from official life.
A return to Yangzhou.
And finally,
new bamboo rising higher than the old.
Seven Chapters of Bamboo was not a historical seven-poem cycle assembled or titled by Zheng Xie himself.
It is a new musical suite created by Grandevity Studio from seven of Zheng Xie’s original bamboo poems.
The poems are arranged into a spiritual progression:
Art → Wind → Backbone → People → Integrity → Return → Inheritance
Every sung word comes from Zheng Xie.
There are no newly written modern lyrics.
No paraphrased rewriting.
No invented chorus.
No added lyrical lines.
No original line is repeated simply to extend the song.
The work begins with:
四十年來畫竹枝。
For forty years I have painted bamboo branches.
and ends with:
十丈龍孫繞鳳池。
Ten-zhang dragon shoots encircle Phoenix Pond.
Across seven movements, bamboo becomes art, character, civic conscience, integrity, homecoming and inheritance.
Watch the MV: 🎬 Seven Chapters of Bamboo | Official Music Video
Headphones recommended. Set consistently in the mid-Qing period, the film follows Zheng Xie from an ink-filled scholar’s studio into the autumn winds of Xiaoxiang, bamboo rooted in broken rock, the county office of Weixian, his departure from official life, his return to Yangzhou and finally a garden where new bamboo rises above the old. The film does not end in decline. It ends in renewal.
This Is a New Musical Sequence, Not a Historical Seven-Poem Cycle
The title Seven Chapters of Bamboo belongs to this project.
Zheng Xie did not historically assemble these seven poems into a single cycle under this name.
Grandevity Studio selected seven independent bamboo poems and arranged them so that each one changes the meaning of bamboo.
The progression is deliberate.
The first movement asks how an artist learns to paint.
The second places the painted bamboo into wind.
The third asks why it can remain standing.
The fourth turns from private character toward ordinary people.
The fifth removes official status.
The sixth returns home.
The seventh moves beyond the artist’s own life and toward the next generation.
No poem has been rewritten to create that sequence.
The structure is created entirely through selection and order.
Movement I: Art
The first poem begins:
四十年來畫竹枝，
日間揮寫夜間思。
冗繁削盡留清瘦，
畫到生時是熟時。
For forty years I have painted bamboo branches;
by day I brush them down, by night I ponder.
I cut away tangled excess and leave only lean purity;
when painting reaches rawness again, that is true mastery.
The crucial idea is not simply that Zheng Xie practised for forty years.
It is:
冗繁削盡留清瘦。
Cut away the tangled excess.
Maturity is not endless accumulation.
It is learning what can be removed.
The “lean purity” of the bamboo becomes a principle of art.
Then:
畫到生時是熟時。
True mastery eventually returns to something that feels alive, raw and unforced.
For this reason, the suite begins not with triumph,
but with reduction.
Movement II: Wind
The second poem is another bamboo-painting poem.
Within this project, it is labelled Painting Bamboo: Autumn Wind simply to distinguish it from Movement I. “Autumn Wind” is a production chapter title, not an alteration of Zheng Xie’s poem.
秋風昨夜渡瀟湘，
觸石穿林慣作狂。
惟有竹枝渾不怕，
挺然相鬥一千場。
Last night the autumn wind crossed Xiaoxiang;
striking rock and piercing forest, it raged as always.
Only the bamboo branches remained unafraid,
standing upright, contending through a thousand bouts.
The bamboo now leaves the paper.
It enters weather.
It becomes character.
Movement III: Backbone
Bamboo and Rock makes that character explicit:
咬定青山不放鬆，
立根原在破巖中。
千磨萬擊還堅勁，
任爾東西南北風。
Clinging fast to the green mountain, never letting go,
its roots stand within shattered rock.
After countless grindings and blows, it remains strong and firm;
let the winds blow east, west, south and north.
The famous final line is supported by what comes before it.
The bamboo does not endure because the wind is weak.
It endures because:
立根原在破巖中。
Its root has found a place even within broken rock.
The project’s first large musical peak therefore belongs not merely to defiance,
but to rootedness.
Movement IV: People
The fourth movement changes the meaning of bamboo completely.
Zheng Xie served as magistrate of Weixian.
A county magistrate in the Qing dynasty was the principal local official of a county, with responsibility extending across administration, taxation, public security and judicial affairs.
Historic Weixian corresponds broadly to the area of present-day Weifang in Shandong Province.
In Painting Bamboo in the Weixian Office, Zheng Xie writes:
衙齋臥聽蕭蕭竹，
疑是民間疾苦聲。
些小吾曹州縣吏，
一枝一葉總關情。
Reclining in the yamen study, I hear the bamboo rustle;
I suspect it is the voice of the people’s suffering.
Small indeed are we, mere county officials;
yet every branch and every leaf is bound to feeling.
The first three movements ask how a person should stand.
The fourth asks:
once you are standing,
who do you hear?
The wind in the bamboo is no longer merely natural sound.
It becomes the suffering of ordinary people.
This is the moral pivot of the entire suite.
Movement V: Integrity
Then official status is removed.
烏紗擲去不為官，
囊橐蕭蕭兩袖寒。
寫取一枝清瘦竹，
秋風江上作漁竿。
I cast away the black gauze cap and cease to be an official;
my travel bag is sparse, my two sleeves cold.
I paint one slender, lean bamboo branch;
on the autumn river, I will make it into a fishing rod.
The black gauze cap represents office.
Once it is thrown aside,
what remains?
Not wealth.
Not ceremonial prestige.
Not a heavily loaded carriage.
Only the same lean bamboo that appeared in the first movement.
At the beginning, “lean” described artistic style.
Here it also describes a way of leaving office.
Movement VI: Return
Then warmth enters the suite again:
二十年前載酒瓶，
春風倚醉竹西亭。
而今再種揚州竹，
依舊淮南一片青。
Twenty years ago I carried a wine flask,
drunk in the spring breeze, leaning at Zhuxi Pavilion.
Now I plant Yangzhou bamboo once more;
Huainan remains one continuous field of green.
This project strictly preserves the adopted 淮南, Huainan, version used in the finished song.
Yangzhou is today’s Yangzhou in Jiangsu Province.
Twenty years have passed.
Zheng Xie does not return to the same youth.
But spring,
wine,
bamboo,
and the cultural landscape of Yangzhou can still be recognised.
Return is therefore not reversal.
It is recognition after change.
Movement VII: Inheritance
The final movement moves beyond Zheng Xie himself:
新竹高於舊竹枝，
全憑老幹為扶持。
下年再有新生者，
十丈龍孫繞鳳池。
New bamboo rises higher than the old branches,
all because the old trunks gave their support.
Next year there will be new growth again;
ten-zhang dragon shoots encircle Phoenix Pond.
The new bamboo is higher.
Yet this is not presented as a defeat of the old.
Its growth depends upon support.
The value of the older generation is not to remain permanently above those who follow.
It is to make greater height possible.
And the poem does not stop with one new generation:
下年再有新生者。
Next year, there will be new growth again.
That is why the suite ends not with ageing,
but with renewal.
Zheng Xie: When Bamboo Becomes a Spiritual Self-Portrait
Zheng Xie, courtesy name Kerou and art name Banqiao, was born in 1693 and died in 1765 during the Qing dynasty.
He came from Xinghua, corresponding to today’s Xinghua City under Taizhou, Jiangsu Province.
A poet, calligrapher and painter, he became especially celebrated for orchids and bamboo and remains one of the most recognisable figures associated with the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou.
He passed the jinshi examination in 1736.
In 1742 he became magistrate of Fan County, today part of Puyang in Henan Province.
In 1746 he was transferred to Weixian, broadly corresponding to present-day Weifang in Shandong.
Zheng Xie did not paint bamboo simply because bamboo was visually elegant.
Its leanness,
resilience,
hollow centre,
rootedness,
and survival through wind
gradually merged with his ideas about art, character, official responsibility and personal conduct.
In his work, bamboo can therefore be many things at once:
a plant,
a painting,
a discipline,
a moral measure,
the suffering of ordinary people,
integrity,
homecoming,
and inheritance.
That is the foundation of Seven Chapters of Bamboo.
Music: Seven Movements Instead of a Repeating Chorus
The core sound is:
Premium early-2000s Taiwan/Hong Kong Mandopop Neo-Soul Cinematic Suite
Tempo: 72 BPM.
Meter: 6/8.
Vocal: warm, restrained and clearly articulated Mandarin baritone.
There is no conventional repeated pop chorus.
No original lyric line is sung twice.
Movement I, Art, uses felt piano, nylon-string guitar, Fender Rhodes, sparse cello and guqin harmonics.
At:
冗繁削盡留清瘦
the arrangement itself begins to remove layers.
Movement II, Wind, introduces brushed drums and bass while the strings become less stable.
Movement III, Backbone, adds firmer low strings and drums.
任爾東西南北風
forms the first major peak.
Movement IV, People, suddenly retreats toward piano, cello and near-silence.
疑是民間疾苦聲
does not need to be shouted.
Its weight comes from restraint.
Movement V, Integrity, darkens and moves lower.
Movement VI, Return, allows Rhodes and guitar to become warmer again.
Movement VII, Inheritance, gradually introduces luminous strings and xiao.
The final line does not become a theatrical shout.
The music simply opens into light.
The MV: Let the Man, the Bamboo and Time Change Together
The MV uses a cinematic historical-realism approach in 16:9.
Character design, clothing, hairstyles, writing tools, lamps, county offices, boats, gardens and architecture are unified around a mid-Qing setting.
Zheng Xie remains the central figure throughout.
His age changes subtly across the seven movements:
artist,
man facing the wind,
magistrate,
departing official,
returning scholar,
older observer of new bamboo.
His facial identity and overall physical design remain consistent.
A small number of common people appear in Movement IV.
A young boy appears in Movement VII.
Neither creates a separate narrative.
They allow:
一枝一葉總關情
and:
新竹高於舊竹枝
to become fully human rather than remaining abstract symbolism.
Three visual motifs return throughout the film:
ink bamboo and xuan paper,
bamboo shadows moving in the wind,
and Zheng Xie watching bamboo.
By the final seconds,
the singing has ended.
Morning light remains.
Bamboo remains.
Still water remains.
And the new bamboo continues to grow.
📜 Complete Sung Text / Original Chinese with English Translation
All sung words are taken entirely from Zheng Xie’s original poems.
No modern expansion・No rewriting・No added lyrics・No repeated original lines.
Movement I | Painting Bamboo
四十年來畫竹枝，
日間揮寫夜間思。
冗繁削盡留清瘦，
畫到生時是熟時。
For forty years I have painted bamboo branches;
by day I brush them down, by night I ponder.
I cut away tangled excess and leave only lean purity;
when painting reaches rawness again, that is true mastery.
Movement II | Painting Bamboo: Autumn Wind
秋風昨夜渡瀟湘，
觸石穿林慣作狂。
惟有竹枝渾不怕，
挺然相鬥一千場。
Last night the autumn wind crossed Xiaoxiang;
striking rock and piercing forest, it raged as always.
Only the bamboo branches remained unafraid,
standing upright, contending through a thousand bouts.
“Autumn Wind” is a production chapter title used to distinguish this poem from the other Painting Bamboo poem. It is not an alteration of Zheng Xie’s original verse.
Movement III | Bamboo and Rock
咬定青山不放鬆，
立根原在破巖中。
千磨萬擊還堅勁，
任爾東西南北風。
Clinging fast to the green mountain, never letting go,
its roots stand within shattered rock.
After countless grindings and blows, it remains strong and firm;
let the winds blow east, west, south and north.
Movement IV | Painting Bamboo in the Weixian Office
衙齋臥聽蕭蕭竹，
疑是民間疾苦聲。
些小吾曹州縣吏，
一枝一葉總關情。
Reclining in the yamen study, I hear the bamboo rustle;
I suspect it is the voice of the people’s suffering.
Small indeed are we, mere county officials;
yet every branch and every leaf is bound to feeling.
Movement V | Returning Home
烏紗擲去不為官，
囊橐蕭蕭兩袖寒。
寫取一枝清瘦竹，
秋風江上作漁竿。
I cast away the black gauze cap and cease to be an official;
my travel bag is sparse, my two sleeves cold.
I paint one slender, lean bamboo branch;
on the autumn river, I will make it into a fishing rod.
Movement VI | First Bamboo Painting After Returning to Yangzhou
二十年前載酒瓶，
春風倚醉竹西亭。
而今再種揚州竹，
依舊淮南一片青。
Twenty years ago I carried a wine flask,
drunk in the spring breeze, leaning at Zhuxi Pavilion.
Now I plant Yangzhou bamboo once more;
Huainan remains one continuous field of green.
Movement VII | New Bamboo
新竹高於舊竹枝，
全憑老幹為扶持。
下年再有新生者，
十丈龍孫繞鳳池。
New bamboo rises higher than the old branches,
all because the old trunks gave their support.
Next year there will be new growth again;
ten-zhang dragon shoots encircle Phoenix Pond.
From Painting Bamboo to Supporting New Bamboo
Read separately, each poem is already complete.
Placed together, another pattern becomes visible.
First, an artist learns how to paint.
Then how to face wind.
Then why one can remain standing.
Public office teaches him to hear the suffering of other people.
Leaving office tests what can truly be carried away.
Returning to Yangzhou reconnects him with where he came from.
Finally,
the highest point is no longer his own height.
It is the height of the new bamboo.
The deepest movement of Seven Chapters of Bamboo is therefore not from youth to old age.
It is from self-formation
to responsibility
to inheritance.
💿 Credits
- Song Title: Seven Chapters of Bamboo
- Chinese Title: 竹七章
- Classical Source: Seven original bamboo poems by Zheng Xie
- Author: Zheng Xie / Zheng Banqiao
- Period: Qing Dynasty
- Project Form: Seven-movement musical suite newly arranged by Grandevity Studio
- Original Text / Complete Sung Words: Zheng Xie
- Lyrics Format: 100% original poems, with no modern expansion, rewriting, added lyrics or repeated original lines
- Movement Sequence: Art → Wind → Backbone → People → Integrity → Return → Inheritance
- Music Style: Premium early-2000s Taiwan/Hong Kong Mandopop Neo-Soul Cinematic Suite
- Tempo / Meter: 72 BPM / 6/8
- Composition / Arrangement: Suno AI / Grandevity Studio
- Vocals: Suno AI Mandarin baritone
- Music Production: Grandevity Studio
- AI-Assisted Visuals: ChatGPT Images
- Video Editing / Art Direction / Creative Production: Grandevity Studio
- Released by: Grandevity Limited
- Production Year: 2026
- Official MV: https://youtu.be/hpvfrpTQci0
Music Style and Mood:
Premium early-2000s Taiwan/Hong Kong Mandopop Neo-Soul Cinematic Suite at 72 BPM in 6/8. Seven through-composed movements use felt piano, Fender Rhodes, nylon-string guitar, cello, chamber strings, guqin harmonics, xiao, brushed drums and neo-soul bass. The suite begins with artistic reduction, grows into wind and rooted strength, retreats into near-silence for the suffering of ordinary people, darkens through resignation from office, warms again in Yangzhou, and finally opens into luminous strings and xiao as new bamboo rises above the old.
⚖️ Copyright Notice
The seven original poems by Zheng Xie are public-domain classical literary works.
Seven Chapters of Bamboo was not a historical seven-poem cycle assembled by Zheng Xie himself. It is a newly arranged musical suite created by Grandevity Studio from seven of his original poems.
This musical production uses Zheng Xie’s original poems as 100% of the sung text. No modern lyrical expansion, paraphrased rewriting, newly added lyrics or other newly written lyric sections have been introduced, and no original lyric line is repeated merely to extend the work.
The music production, recorded master, arrangement, mix, master, MV visuals, cover artwork, video editing, subtitles, shot design, art direction, promotional writing and overall creative production were produced by or lawfully licensed to Grandevity Limited / Grandevity Studio. Relevant rights are retained and administered subject to applicable law and the terms of the platforms and production tools used.
© 2026 Grandevity Limited / Grandevity Studio. All Rights Reserved.
Unauthorized re-uploading, redistribution, reproduction, editing, sampling, commercial use, platform distribution, AI training, dataset use, remixing, or incorporation into another audiovisual work is prohibited except where otherwise permitted by applicable law or license.
Licensing Contact:
About This Project
Seven Chapters of Bamboo is part of Grandevity Studio’s Classical Literature Reimagined in Music series.
The purpose is not to write a modern answer on behalf of Zheng Xie.
Nor is it to force classical poetry into one fixed idea of “ancient-style” music.
The original words remain.
Their language.
Their order.
Their thought.
Their restraint.
Contemporary production provides a new way to hear them.
Seven Chapters of Bamboo begins with one painted branch.
What remains at the end is the story of how one person learned to paint,
how he learned to stand,
how he served,
how he left,
how he returned,
and finally,
how he allowed those who came after him
to grow higher.