The Meaning of Colors in Ancient China

Reprinted with permission by Pureinsight.org
 
Five Elements…Five Colors

For more than 2000 years, the Chinese people have used brilliant colors. Today in modern China, red is a very popular color. However, contrary to popular belief, ancient peoples did not pay special attention to the color red

The Chinese character for “color” is 颜色 (Yan Se). In ancient China, however, 颜色 carried a slightly different meaning. It more accurately meant "color in the face." For instance, “Verses of Chu State” (Chu Ci Yu Fu) might use the expression "Yan Se Qiao Cui" which means that one appears weary. In “Explaining Characters and Expressions” (Shuo Wen Jie Zi), "Yan" means the area between one's eyebrows, and "Se" means qi, or energy. The commentaries added by the noted scholar Duan Yu Cai says, "Shame, regret, joy and worries are called “Yan Se” because "one's heart reaches qi and qi will reach the eyebrows." So it’s clear that "Yan Se" referred to color in one's face and not colors in general

“Yan Se” began to mean all color during the Tang Dynasty. Noted Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu, in his poem "The Bottoms of Flowers," wrote: "Know good colors clearly, and do not be content with sand or mud." The Chinese idiom "Wu (five) Yan Liu (six) Se," which is used to describe many colors, also suggests colors in general.

Traditional Chinese physics taught that the five elements are water, fire, wood, metal and earth, in that order. They correspond to black, red, blue-green, white and yellow, respectively. Ancient Chinese people believed that the five elements made everything in nature. Five thousand years ago during the reign of Huang Di (known as the Yellow Emperor) people actually worshiped the color yellow. From that period forward, through the Shang, Tang, Zhou and Qin dynasties, China’s emperors used the Theory of the Five Elements to select colors. Because people understood that "colors come naturally while black and white are first," they gradually established a relationship between colors and the principle of the five elements, which guided the natural movement of heaven and the heavenly Dao. People chose clothing, food, transportation and housing according to natural changes in the seasons—from spring to summer and autumn, and then to winter.  Traditional Chinese views regard black, red, blue-green, white and yellow as standard colors

The I Ching, or Book of Changes, regards black as Heaven’s color. The saying "heaven and earth of mysterious black" was rooted in the observation that the northern sky was black for a long time. They believed Tian Di, or Heavenly Emperor, resided in the North Star. The Taiji symbol also uses black and white to represent the unity of Yin and Yang. Ancient Chinese regarded black as the king of colors and honored black longer than any other color. Lao Zi said that "five colors make people blind," so the Dao School chose black as the color of the Dao.

White represented gold and symbolized brightness, purity, and fulfillment. White also is the color of mourning. Ancient Chinese people wore white clothes and hats only when they mourned for the dead. That tradition is still practiced today.

The Chinese people, both ancient and modern, cherish the color red. Red is everywhere during Chinese New Year and other holidays and family gatherings for it symbolizes good fortune and joy.  Unfortunately, since the Communist takeover of China, red has been used by the Chinese Communist Party to represent danger, blood, violence and radical actions.

Blue-green indicates spring when everything overflows with vigor and vitality.

Yellow symbolizes the earth. The old saying, "Yellow generates Yin and Yang," meant that yellow is the center of everything. Yellow was the symbolic color of the five legendary emperors of ancient China. Placed above brown, yellow also signifies neutrality and is considered the most beautiful color.  Yellow also represents freedom from worldly cares and is thus esteemed in Buddhism. Monks' garments are yellow as well as Buddhist temples.

Color embodies an even richer culture in Chinese folk traditions. Yellow is the color for emperors. Yellow often decorates royal palaces, altars and temples. Yellow also represents being free from worldly cares. Therefore it is also a color respected in Buddhism.

Each dynasty in China’s long history gave its own significance to various colors. In every dynasty, the clothing for each official rank had their own color. To support the Zhou Dynasty's ceremonial rituals, Confucius defined yellow, blue-green, white, red and black as standard colors. He related them to benevolence, virtue and kindness and incorporated them into formal ceremonies. People of the Zhou Dynasty honored red.

During that time, people incorporated colors when naming seasons and directions. A blue-green sun represented spring. Its main guardian god was a green-blue dragon, and its direction was east. Summer’s color was red, guarded by a red sparrow, and its direction was south. Autumn was white, guarded by a white tiger with a westerly direction. Winter was represented by black, guarded by a black tortoise, and its direction was north.

Qin Shi Huang unified China in 211 BC and began the Qin Dynasty. He followed his ancestors' traditions, distinguished black from white, respected the virtue of water and "decided that October was the beginning of winter and its color was a superior black." When he ascended the throne, "the color of his clothing and flags was black."

Because of its association with gold, yellow began to symbolize the royal court after the Han Dynasty. The emperor’s subjects could not wear yellow clothing.

Although regarded as a secondary color, purple signifies a propitious omen and solemnity. Among the Chinese people, there is the saying "purple sparrows in beams, carries mud in pairs, coming and going." However, during the Han Dynasty, bright purple was often regarded as an extremely precious and rare color. In the Tang dynasty, officials above the rank of Fifth Class as well as member of the royal court wore purple clothing. A purpose border on clothing often made an elegant touch in apparel.

Chinese Arts

Chinese culture created a close and binding relationship between color and ceramics, murals, paintings, and poetry…even city planning. After the Ming Dynasty, only the Emperor’s relatives could have homes with red walls and yellow roof tiles. His subjects lived in houses with blue bricks and roof tiles. However, carved beams and columns used rich hues. Many buildings used black tiles and white walls.

In the Dun Huang Caves, dating back 1500 years, there are more than 10,000 mural fragments of various dynasties. Each dynasty used different color combinations. Murals of the Northern Wei Dynasty incorporated red and brown, supplemented by blue and black. Tang Dynasty murals featured yellow. Song Dynasty murals were dominated by blue and green.

Highly-skilled Chinese paintings express the artist’s idea through the ink’s thickness and thinness. The practice is described as "ink holds five colors" and "shinning brilliantly without the usage of bright colors." "Ink holds five colors" refers to five ink shades—charred, thick, ash, thin and clear. In a painter's eye, the color of water is clearly different in each season. In “Lin Quan Gao Zhi” (A Book about Paintings), Guo Xi wrote, "The color of water is green in spring, bluish green in summer, aqua in autumn, and black in winter."

As recorded in “Selections of Famous Paintings of the Tang Dynasty”, Emperor Xuan Zong praised Li Si Xun's landscape paintings with their strong green and blue hues as "the best landscape paintings in the nation." The ancient Chinese people were good at extracting colors from minerals and plants. This type of painting is often outlined with brilliant paints extracted from various minerals such as Shi Qing (azurite), Shi Lu (mineral green), Shi Huang (mineral yellow), Zhu Sha (cinnabar), Yan Zhi (cochineal), Qian Fen (lead powder), and Ni Jin (golden paint). With these advances in painting, the result became bright and rich.

Chinese poems and paintings share the same origin. The relationship is described as "a painting recites a poem and a poem draws a painting." Poets could expertly describe color and poems often alluded to vibrant colors. Poet Cui Hu created wonderfully colorful scenes as shown in two lines from his poem, "Ti Du Cheng Nan Zhuang (“For the Southern Village in the Capital”). These lines express the beauty of colors for people to ponder for thousands of years:
 

Last year inside this court,
peach flowers reflect each other in red.

Poet Bai Juyi wrote in "Verse on River Mu,"

 
Paving in water is a streak of the setting sun,
turning red is the rustling river

A“silk radical” character attached to another Chinese character can describe different shades of the color of silk. According to “Shuo Wen Jie Zi” (Explaining Characters and Expressions), 24 characters describe colors of silk fabrics including red, green, purple, deep red (crimson), bright red, dark red (dark purple), light blue, orange red, white, and so on. From this, we can surmise the variety and richness of silk fabrics from the silk manufacturing industry in ancient China.  During the Warring States Period, lacquerware decoration reached a highly skilled level. The state of Qi was especially well-known for its brightly colored silk products. Many of the silk goods unearthed from ancient tombs have maintained their original colors of brown, red, black, purple, and yellow.

Chinese pottery and lacquerware uses rich color even more extensively. The formulation of richly colored glazes infuses these pieces with a brilliant and lustrous appearance. From the renowned tri-colored glazed pottery of the Tang Dynasty (Tang San Cai) to five-colored glazed pottery, from the celadonware to white glazedware, from white and blue porcelain to ceramics with lustrous glazes, color plays a key role in the creation of pottery. Ancient Chinese pottery-making reached its zenith in colored and black pieces. Chinese lacquerware had exquisite patterns and dazzling color.

Ancient Chinese people understood that color feeds the spirit and expresses the depth of human experience. The 2007 Chinese New Year Spectacular celebrates color in all it intensity and richness through lighting, costumes and scenery and harkens back to the traditional meanings of color. Celebrate color! Celebrate a spectacular Chinese New Year!