Now is something I didn't know about. A talk at the Royal Academy of Music in London:

http://www.ram.ac.uk/events?event_id=2834

Chinese New Year on the Western Front
Tuesday 18 November 2014, 7:00 pm, Museum Galleries

Probably the earliest surviving footage of an instrument from the Chinese erhu family in performance comes not from China itself but from troops of the Chinese Labour Corps celebrating Chinese New Year on the Western Front during the First World War. Academic Studies lecturer Dr Colin Huehns examines these films amongst other early clips and still photography which include erhu performance. Musical examples will be played on erhu variants — the banhu and jinghu — as well as erhu pieces from Shandong province, the region of China from which the Chinese Labour Corps was principally recruited.

This event complements the Academy Museum's current exhibition, War Music: Notes from the First World War, which runs until March 2015.

Free, no tickets required