ZHOU Long's three chamber works for Western instruments—Secluded Orchid, Su (Tracing Back) and Taigu Rhyme —reflect not only the evolution of his compositional techniques before, during, and after his studies in the United States, but also his increasingly sophisticated approach to modernizing materials from Chinese traditional and ancient music. Following the chronology of these three works, this study adopts the three concepts of “transplantation, translation, and transformation” to describe the progression in his treatment of ancient musical materials from “explicit” to “implicit”. “Transplantation” refers to the direct transfer of ancient music in its original form onto Western instruments; “translation” examines the specific performance techniques that enable Western instruments to sonically imitating the music and timbres of the guqin; “transformation” reveals how the works internalize both ancient musical materials and the broader musical culture of the Tang Dynasty, thereby generating new structural aesthetics and compositional methods. In this way, this article outlines the development trajectory in ZHOU Long's applications of ancient Chinese musical materials and the corresponding shifts in his compositional style.