A yangqin on a stand. The trapezoidal yangqin (simplified Chinese: 扬琴; traditional Chinese: 揚琴; pinyin: yángqín; Jyutping: joeng4 kam4) is a Chinese hammered dulcimer, likely derived from the Iranian santur or the European dulcimer. It used to be written with the characters 洋 琴 (lit. "foreign zither"), but over time the first character changed to 揚 (also pronounced "yáng ...