The pipa in Nanguan, Quanzhou is an ancient horizontal embrace, and her musical style is somewhat different from that of vertical embrace. The horizontal pipa is soothing and elegant, and the vertical pipa is bright, which is more expressive in fast-paced music.

At first, the pipa was held across the chest, but in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the posture was changed to an oblique left-hand embrace. There are also four-string and five-string pipa = from the initial horizontal embrace to the oblique embrace, which changed the playing technique. After the Song Dynasty, the four-stringed pipa became the protagonist, and finally the pipa became a vertical piano-holding flick.