Pipa plays an important role in the Plucking Section. It has great capabilities of performing complicated music. It had being used by street artist and priest to earn a living. It was being used in Chinese Operas. In modern China, it is capable of performing on stage as Solo and in an Orchestra.

It has a long history. The Tang Dynasty Poets had used it as theme of their poems. The famous poem "Pi Pa Xing" by Bai Ju Yi is an example. In the 1930s, the famous Musician, Liu Tian Hua, had improvised upon the Pipa and made it one of the major discipline in the College of Music.

It has four strings which are normally tuned to A, D, E, A. There are however more than 12 ways of tuning the Pipa, more than 30 ways of techniques associated with the right hand’s plucking with finger nails, more than 10 ways of techniques associated with the left hand’s fingering. Its music is extremely expressive, and are capable of producing realistic sound effects of millions of horses galloping, and bombs in battlefield.