Just like DICKENS’s famous novel, this paper selects two different locations in a time of political turmoil. Following the Chinese Revolution of 1949, a divergence in qin 琴zither practices appeared between Hong Kong and the mainland, which later led to different lifelong personal commitments to its transmission on either side of the border. A prominent player in particular, TSAR Teh-Yun蔡德允 (1905–2007), left Shanghai for Hong Kong in the early 1950s, giving birth to a generation of fruitful practitioners in the former British colony and abroad. Meanwhile her own teacher SHEN Caonong 沈草農 (1891–1973) had stayed back in Shanghai. Along with other no less prominent figures such as ZHANG Ziqian 張子謙 (1899–1991) and ZHA Fuxi 査阜西 (1898–1976), SHEN took part in the historical wave of institutionalization that occurred in music research and teaching, especially after 1956 when the qin began to be included in modern conservatories’ curricula. Following this original rupture, two musiking practices were shaped by the vicissitudes of the second half of the Chinese 20th century: one being caught in a social milieu dictated by Socialist realism serving the masses, the other being preserved in the intimacy of private literati cabinets. This presentation explores the various arguments made in the related historiography that justify such cleavage. It proposes a study which puts in historical perspective any claim of orthodoxy or (in)authenticity in the long history of this living musical art.