Bodily or corporeal significance in western art music has been explored in recent years. In Chinese tradition the body played a tremendously important role in the understanding, appreciation and actual practice of guqin prior to the modernization movement of early 20(superscript th) century, yet this embodied significance is very different from what one finds in recent studies about the musical body. This essay proposes that a unique feature of guqin lies in the unification of bodily ideal and musical beauty, and that this is what makes its embodied significance distinguished from that explored by Susan McClary and Elizabeth Le Gunn in 17(superscript th)-and 18(superscript th)-century European music. In the guqin tradition, the notion of bodily ideal-such as longevity and health-is closely associated with the notion of beauty and goodness. As explored in this paper, such a unique feature is reflected not only in various historical judgments of guqin music or performance, in poetry and other literary works from various times, but also in the notation, the structure of the instrument, and in many specific regulations found in instructions written specifically for guqin players.