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Chinese Color Language

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Color Science and Technology

Synonyms

Color categorization, Color idiom, Color lexicon, Color naming, Color symbolism

Definition

Associative and symbolic meanings of culturally the most significant color categories.

Notions on Color in Early China

In Western thought color has been associated with light (at least since the time of Aristotle), whereas in ancient China color was linked to the dichotomy colored/uncolored – either by nature, or artificially – and unrelated to the presence or absence of light. Colors were considered the property of the object itself and were therefore “perceived not as abstract concepts but as concrete substances, endowed with rich meanings” [1]. For instance, color correspondences applied to sacrificial animals during the Late Shāng 尚 (ca. 1250–1046 BCE) period required that white, red, and multicolored animals were sacrificed in the ancestral cult; black sheep were used in the rain-making ritual; yellow animals were particularly addressed to the cosmic spirits of the earth and the...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Humanities, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy

    Victoria Bogushevskaya

Authors
  1. Victoria Bogushevskaya
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Correspondence to Victoria Bogushevskaya .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Color Science & Imaging Lab, North Carolina State Univ, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Renzo Shamey

Section Editor information

  1. Faculty of Engineering Sciences, University College London, London, Please select, UK

    Lindsay MacDonald

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Bogushevskaya, V. (2022). Chinese Color Language. In: Shamey, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Color Science and Technology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27851-8_433-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27851-8_433-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-27851-8

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