The eight categories of Chinese musical instruments are: silk, bamboo, wood, stone, metal, clay, gourd and hide. There are other instruments which may not fit these classifications.

The pipa is a four-stringed Chinese musical instrument, belonging to the plucked category of instruments. Sometimes called the Chinese lute, the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets ranging from 12 to 26. Another Chinese four-string plucked lute is the liuqin, which looks like a smaller version of the pipa.

The pipa is one of the most popular Chinese instruments and has been played for almost two thousand years in China. Several related instruments in East and Southeast Asia are derived from the pipa; these include the Japanese biwa, the Vietnamese ?àn t? bà, and the Korean bipa. The Korean instrument is the only one of the three that is no longer used; examples survive in museums, but attempts to revive that instrument failed.

Different traditions with different styles of playing pipa are found in different regions of China which then developed into schools. In the narrative traditions where the pipa is used as an accompaniment to narrative singing, there are the Suzhou (蘇州彈詞), Sichuan (四川清音), and Northern (北方曲藝) styles. A number of other schools are associated with regional chamber ensemble traditions such as the Jiangnan, Chaozhou and Nanguan music. Nanguan pipa is unusual in that it is held in the near-horizontal position in the ancient manner instead of the vertical position normally used for solo playing in the present day.