I recently went to a concert of the Minnesota Chinese Music Ensemble at Macalester College. It was a great performance, including premieres of some music by visiting Chinese composers. One of the composers, Ying Zhang, demonstrated an instrument I’d never seen before. It’s called a hulu-se (or hulusi, or balangdao). It consists of a small gourd you blow into, containing a reed or reeds, and three bamboo tubes. One tube has holes much like a tin whistle, and seemed to be played much the same way. The other two are drones that create a sort of built-in harmony part. It is absolutely wild to hear. Anyway, I came home and started looking around on the web for information on this instrument – not much there. Anybody know where you can get a hulu-se?
I found this link: http://www.asza.com/ihuluse.shtml
Contact them as some of the instruments on the webpage are for sale.