The maguhu is a Chinese

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 bowed

Bow (music)

In music, a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones....

 string instrument

String instrument

A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...

 in the huqin

Huqin

Huqin is a family of bowed string instruments, more specifically, a spike fiddle popularly used in Chinese music. The instruments consist of a round, hexagonal, or octagonal sound box at the bottom with a neck attached that protrudes upwards...

family of musical instruments. It has two strings and its sound box is made from the femur

Femur

The femur , or thigh bone, is the most proximal bone of the leg in tetrapod vertebrates capable of walking or jumping, such as most land mammals, birds, many reptiles such as lizards, and amphibians such as frogs. In vertebrates with four legs such as dogs and horses, the femur is found only in...

 bone of a horse

Horse

The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...

 (or alternatively a cow or mule

Mule

A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes. Of the two F1 hybrids between these two species, a mule is easier to obtain than a hinny...

). The front end of the sound box is covered with snake skin (or, alternatively, shark or frog skin), and the end of the neck is carved in the shape of a horse's head.

The maguhu is used primarily by the Zhuang and Buyei

Buyei

The Buyei are an ethnic group living in southern mainland China. Numbering 2.5 million, they are the 11th largest of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China...

 peoples of the southern Chinese province of Guangxi

Guangxi

Guangxi, formerly romanized Kwangsi, is a province of southern China along its border with Vietnam. In 1958, it became the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, a region with special privileges created specifically for the Zhuang people.Guangxi's location, in...

. It is used in the ensemble that accompanies guiju (桂剧; Guangxi opera) and is also used in the bayin (八音) ensemble of the Zhuang people (along with the tuhu

Tuhu

The tuhu is a Chinese bowed string instrument in the huqin family of instruments. It is used primarily by non-Han ethnic groups of southern China, particularly the Zhuang, who live in the Guangxi province and use it in their bayin ensemble...

, huluhu

Huluhu

The huluhu is a Chinese bowed string instrument in the huqin family of instruments. It has two strings, and its sound box is made from a gourd, with a face made of thin wood...

, sanxian

Sanxian

The sanxian is a Chinese lute — a three-stringed fretless plucked musical instrument. It has a long fingerboard, and the body is traditionally made from snakeskin stretched over a rounded rectangular resonator. It is made in several sizes for different purposes and in the late 20th century a...

, drums, cymbals, and other instruments).

The instrument's name is derived from the Chinese words mǎ gǔ, meaning "horse bone," and hú (short for huqin).

External links

• Maguhu page (Chinese)
• Maguhu page (Chinese)
• Maguhu page (Chinese)
• Maguhu photos
• Maguhu photo