The question every beginner asks is when they will be able to play a piece from start to finish. Sooner than you expect — provided the piece is the right one. Starting with Zhan Tai Feng is how people talk themselves into quitting.
Stage one: three to six months, getting a melody to run. No left hand yet; the goal is pitch, time and hand shape at once. Nursery rhymes and folk-song arrangements do the job — Xiao Xing Xing (Twinkle Twinkle), Mo Li Hua (Jasmine Flower), and Cang Hai Yi Sheng Xiao (A Laugh in the Sea), which sits entirely inside the pentatonic scale and might as well have been written for the instrument.
Stage two: grades 1–3, short traditional pieces. Feng Xiang Ge, Lao Liu Ban, Shang Lou, Xiao Fang Niu — short, repetitive in technique, easy to finish. Yu Zhou Chang Wan (Fishing Boats at Dusk) usually falls around grade 3–4 and is many players’ first piece that sounds like a real piece.
Stage three: grades 4–6, two hands and tremolo. Liu Yang He, Shan Dan Dan Kai Hua Hong Yan Yan and San Shi San Ban bring in left-hand pressing and coordination. Gao Shan Liu Shui (High Mountains, Flowing Water) exists in Henan, Zhejiang and Shandong versions with the same outline and different technique — learn whichever your teacher teaches. Qin Sang Qu and Xiang Shan She Gu arrive towards the end of this stage.
Stage four: grade 7 and above, length and stamina. Zhan Tai Feng (Fighting the Typhoon), Jiang Jun Ling, Xue Shan Chun Xiao, Lin’an Yi Hen, Qian Zhong Fu, Ming Shan. What makes them hard is not the notes but the length: seven or eight minutes, a tremolo that has to hold, and a shape across the whole piece.
Technique milestones matter more than the list. Around grade 1 it is the basic right-hand strokes and simple left-hand pressing; around grade 3, tremolo and glissando; around grade 5, two-hand coordination and fast finger sequences; from grade 7, long tremolo, swept tremolo and chords. You can skip a piece; you cannot skip the technique — which is why people get stuck on the same piece for months.
Three rules for choosing repertoire. Finishing beats difficulty: a complete grade 4 piece is worth more than half of a grade 7 one. Add one new technique per step, not tremolo and two hands at once. And keep exam pieces separate from studies — one is for expression, the other for mechanism.
Syllabi differ. The Chinese grading systems do not share one list; the same piece can sit two grades apart depending on the book. The stages above are the common case — check the syllabus your exam board publishes for the current year.
Where to get the music. Graded method books are the easiest source: levelled, with fingering marked. Jianpu found online often omits fingering and string positions, and beginners turn the omissions into habits. How to read it: how to read guzheng sheet music.
If you are not sure what to work on now, the timeline in is the guzheng hard to learn may help; what each grade tests is in the grading system. If the instrument is mainly for exam repertoire, choosing a guzheng for graded exams is more to the point. Tell us where you are and we can suggest accordingly.