GG Li

Jun Li teaches the guqin, an instrument whose canon he learned from a master who refused him for two years first. He performs rarely and records never. His backgammon is his second discipline of restraint: slow, structural, each move placed with the certainty of a single resonant note, and conducted in total silence. Then, in the last game of a match, whatever the score, he starts talking, about the position, the opening, the weather, an opponent's habit he noticed early and has been holding since. It arrives so late and so freely that most people assume it means he has lost interest. It means the opposite.