MIMF

Hey folks, A friend of mine recently acquired this oddity and from what I can see, all it needs is a bridge and some strings. The snake skin head is is great shape and is tight, But, what is it? The frets are installed as a major scale with no semitones. The front view show the ballpoint pen as the intonation point. It looks as though it was made in Japan or China via some oriental charactors on a lable. What looks like poorly made position markers are actually pieces of masking tape with Do, Re, Me,... written on them. Is this an actual mainstream instrument with a name or is it a one-off creation by someone?

I should also mention that the frets are made from a thin bar stock and are at least 1/8" tall.

Qinqin.

Thanks Randy, A little google searching landed me at "qin qin" and a 4-string tuning of FCGD. I'm still not clear on whether the instrument should use nylon or steel strings because the articles mention both a traditional version and a modern version and this particular instrument is somewhere in between. I'll try nylon and see what I can noodle. The scale length is 24".