200 instrumentalists. Aside from the orchestras found in the court, musical ensembles, for example those in the sizhu and nanguan tradition, were also found among the general population to provide popular entertainment, and religious groupings may perform music in festivals and other religious settings. Traditional Chinese musical instruments were classified into eight groups (bayin) according to their materials: gourd, earthenware, hide, wood, stone, bronze, silk and bamboo. It is said that there were more than 70 different musical instruments, but many of them have been lost or are obsolete today. Modern Chinese orchestra The modern large Chinese orchestra is a 20th-century development and is based on the Western symphony orchestra, but uses Chinese instruments in place of Western instruments. It also emulates the Western orchestra in terms of the seating position of its musicians and composition techniques. The music produced by the Chinese orchestra however is unique and very distinct from any Western counterpart. Such orchestras usually perform Chinese orchestral music called guoyue or minyue, although its repertoire may occasionally include adaptations of Western orchestral pieces or music originally composed for Western instruments. Origin and development In the early 20th century a number of Chinese musicians became interested in improving traditional Chinese music. While some such as Xiao Youmei, Yuen Ren Chao and He Luting promoted Western music, others defended traditional Chinese and worked to improve it. The president of Peking University Cai Yuanpei proposed using the best of Western music tradition to compensate for the perceived weaknesses in Chinese music, and the Peking University Music Society was formed in 1919. The interest in improving traditional Chinese music along Western model led to a number of music club and ensembles being formed in various cities. An early pioneer was Zheng Jinwen (鄭覲文, 1872–1935) who founded a music institution in Shanghai in 1921, the Great Unity Music Society (大同樂會, Dàtóng Yuèhuì), to develop and maintain Chinese music in the modern age, recreating ancient music and instruments as well as creating new ensemble music for Chinese instruments. Zheng experimented with increasing the number of player in a Jiangnan sizhu ensemble to 35, and separated the instruments into different sections. He began to standardize the instruments, for example inventing methods to resolve the problem of traditional instruments such as dizi where the fundamental tuning for various instruments may be different. He also updated traditional instruments such as the sheng by increasing the number