Invitation to an online guqin gathering

The North American Guqin Association (NAGA) will hold an ONLINE guqin gathering on Saturday, February 16th at 4:00pm Pacific Standard Time (February 16th 7:00pm Eastern Standard Time, February 17th 8:00am Beijing time, February 17th 00:00am GMT). Qin players from different countries and different schools, who learned from different teachers, can chat about qin, play qin, listen, exchange information and meet other qin aficionados.

Guqin master Li Xiangting will attend the online qin gathering.

Instructions:

1. We will use Yahoo Messenger. We have already tested it and we know it will work, and it is available free of charge. To join the qin gathering, You need to download Yahoo Messenger from http://messenger.yahoo.com/ and set up your Yahoo identity (i.e. a screen name and password). It is quite easy to set up.

2. Please email us your screen name by February 15th so we can put you onto the group list for the event.

3. Before the event starts, start Yahoo Messenger and log in using your Yahoo identity. We will then invite you to attend.

4. Please note that this is an experiment for NAGA members, so please sign up to our mailing list at http://www.chineseculture.net/guqin/joinus.html if you have not already done so. It is free. Otherwise, our database will filter you out of the event.

5. You will need to plug a microphone into your computer's sound card in order to speak and play, but if you don't have these you can still type.

6. If you have any questions, please post them on our forum at http://www.chineseculture.net/guqin/html/forum.html

As far as we know this is the first time a guqin yaji has been held online, so it is something of an experiment. Anybody who is interested in qin is welcome to join us. We are looking forward to meeting qin friends online.