Why are musical instruments that are culturally unfamiliar to teachers or learners in higher education so often reduced to technical tuition drills or static cultural symbols? The longstanding tendency to equate technical mastery with achievement has obscured its cultural dimensions, while the absence of appropriate pedagogical approaches and mature frameworks has separated skill from the expressive practices that give music its cultural meaning and logic. Bridging technique, culture, and expression has therefore become a pressing challenge in contemporary instrumental education.To address this challenge, the study used erhu (a two-stringed bowed musical instrument) tuition as a pedagogical context to move beyond technique-centred models, creating space for cultural dialogue, learner experience, and musicality. Rather than a cultural curiosity, the erhu was positioned as a bridge for intercultural learning and dialogue. This inquiry addresses ISME 2026 Sub-theme 5a (instrumental teaching and learning) and musician wellbeing. Two questions guide the study: (1) Which pedagogical strategies enable learners to engage with and reinterpret cultural narratives in repertoires that are culturally unfamiliar to them? (2) How can higher education employ these strategies to cultivate musicality, enhance learner wellbeing, and thereby strengthen cultural agency?A qualitative design combined autoethnography with practice-oriented action research. Five adult beginners from diverse cultural backgrounds each completed three one-to-one hybrid erhu lessons that integrated embodied demonstration, guided practice, and dialogic explanation to link technique with culture. Purple Bamboo Melody (Zizhu Diao) was selected for accessibility and cultural salience; its sliding ornaments embody Jiangnan silk-and-bamboo (Jiangnan sizhu) aesthetics as vocal inflection and phrasing, in contrast to classical portamento, typically considered a continuous expressive glide (public performance example: https://youtu.be/3yh6EEi_yDw). Data were analysed inductively (grounded theory) and deductively via Pollock’s Cultural Analysis (2006-2007), focusing on transdisciplinarity, encounters, and concepts, alongside Bal’s travelling concepts (2002).Findings showed a three-stage pathway: (1) multimodal engagement consolidated technique and expression; (2) dialogic framing enabled learners to perceive phrasing as narrative and symbolic; and (3) learners organised ideas independently, showing agency in cross-cultural meaning-making.The study conceptualises musicality as the capacity to turn technique into meaning and expression through teacher-student interaction. It proposes a transferable framework that situates instrumental learning within cross-cultural contexts, linking embodied technique with cultural symbolism and dialogic reflection, thereby moving learners from technical accuracy to expressive interpretation. Thus, erhu pedagogy serves as a bridge for intercultural dialogue and advances ISME’s vision of unity in music education under the theme ‘Teaching, Learning, and Wellbeing of Musicians’.