Xiao

At a notch flute, the mouthpiece is reduced to a simple notch at the head of the instrument. The player must direct the air stream precisely onto the edge of the notch so that the air breaks there and a tone is produced. This is somewhat similar to the transverse flute, but the notch flute is held vertically.

Well-known notch flutes include the South American quena and the Japanese shakuhachi.

A variant of the shakuhachi comes from China and is called the xiao. It is made of bamboo, but is not tuned pentatonically like the shakuhachi, but diatonically and with a narrower mouthpiece, so that the notes are more stable to play. In addition, the flute is closed at the upper end. 

There is a xiao with a 6-hole tuning, which basically corresponds to the usual 6-hole flutes (tin whistle, reed flutes), but here the top hole on the back is for the thumb. So you use 5 fingers and your thumb.

One variant is the 8-hole xiao. It is not directly diatonically tuned, but has semitones in the scale.

The xiao is available in Chinese G tuning, which corresponds to D major, and Chinese F, which corresponds to C major.

The flute comes with a Chinese lucky knot and a simple fabric cover.