Speaking of China’s traditional colors
There’s a beautiful story behind each name
And it’s a reflection of how Chinese see the world of colors
You can see lots of amazing words describing colors in Chinese classics
Like Mushan Purple
It was the sky’s color the poet saw when he stood on the mountain at dusk
Like Haitian Xia
It was the color of the sunset over the sea
Qing Qing
It’s from the line “Qing qing zi jin, you you wo xin”
It refers to the color of clothes
One color that I like a lot is referred in the book Erya
And it’s named Qielan
Qie means steal
Our ancestors used the word to describe light color
In 2018, I started to study China’s traditional colors
I spent two years devoting myself to the work
I read over 400 valuable and rare historical materials
And I built a system of color words
There’re totally 384 colors
I referred to the 24 solar terms and the 72 climates
Most of the early traditional colors were related to minerals and plants
Classic of Mountains and Seas mentions lots of colors
Such as meitong, meizhe, mei’e, qinghuo, dansu
They’re all in fact minerals used as pigments
Blue was one of the earliest colors used by Chinese
In ancient times, plants such as liaolan, malan and mulan were used as pigments for blue colors
The applying could be traced back to the Xia Dynasty
Now the traditional pigment used in Chinese painting named shiqing
It’s azurite
Animals were also used for pigments in Chinese painting
Yanzhichong is a commonly used red color in Chinese painting
It’s in fact extracted from a small insect
Most of the time when an emperor attended a sacrificial ritual
He would wear xuan for the top and xun for the lower part
Xuan is the light in the morning
When the sun is about to come out from the horizon
It’s dark touched with red
While xun refers to the color
When the sun has disappeared out of sight
And there’s some light remaining in the sky
It’s chihuang
One represents the beginning of a day
And the other represents the end of a day
Wearing those two colors
It shows the awe for the nature
To reproduce China’s traditional colors in the modern days
Plant dyeing is a significant step
These four pieces of clothing are renowned
In the 40th chapter of Dream of Red Mansions
Mrs. Jia told Wang Xifeng
‘That guaze is even older than you’
Its formal name is Ruanyanluo
She mentioned four colors
Yuguo Tianqing
Songlv
Yinhong
And Qiuxiangse
I think it would be really nice
To wear such scarves
Those traditional colors
They’re in fact a reflection of
How Chinese people see the world over the past several thousand years
And how we feel about beauty
A major concern about the traditional colors is how to revitalize them and pass them down
Lots of people appreciate Japanese aesthetics
Occasionally I found walls painted into Japanese traditional colors
In a school in Odaiba, Tokyo
There were also a tale about each color
Written on the walls
Students passed the corridor every day
They’ve already adopted such a method to influence their children with traditional colors
This is an early color card I found in China
It was an industrial color card used by a sock factory in Shanghai in 1958
It clearly shows the name of traditional colors
But it’s a pity that it used chemical pigments
However, the color card itself is really precious
While I was writing the second half of the book
I found by accident that
Dr. Hou Lirui in Shanxi University was introducing a book of China’s traditional colors from Japan
It’s named Caiya
I talked to him by phone for over an hour
Later Dr. Hou shared a photocopy of Caiya with me
I saw Japanese’s passion for China’s traditional colors 140 years ago
I really wish that
China’s traditional colors become accessible to our students
Just like Japan’s traditional colors to their students
I think the study of traditional colors might last for 5 or 10 years
So as to make them live on as traditional Chinese culture