The color of spring: Yingying
Li Li
Night reading Guo Hao, Li Jianming's "Chinese Traditional Colors The Color Aesthetics of the Forbidden City", the book selects 96 pieces of the Forbidden City from hundreds of thousands of cultural relics that should be in season, and extracts traditional colors from cultural relics, corresponding to the 24 solar terms and 72 phenology. Among them, there are many unique and innovative features that are born of figuration, and also talk about excellence and the derivation of imagery.
For example, the color of the rain festival, called "Yingying", is taken from the Hibiscus Stone Wash in the Forbidden City. Hibiscus stone, also known as "rose quartz" and "rose quartz", is a rare and precious stone species in the Yangtze River stone, its color is pink, clear and warm, and the beauty is intoxicating. The hibiscus stone wash stored in the Forbidden City should be the best hibiscus ice powder crystal, the crystal is super transparent, not only does not have half a impurity, even the texture can not be seen, the crystal is clear as water, a faint pink, there is an extremely fine grease luster. This pale pink color was searched by the two authors of "Traditional Chinese Colors" for Chinese and Japanese color related literature, and the rigorous examination was "Yingying".
Before, I only knew that "Yingying" in the ancient text means beautiful, clear, full of appearance, etc., I did not know that it is actually a color. The book notes the color of "Yingying", "its color is like a peach blossom reflecting the water, and it looks forward to it". In addition, there are many ancient texts with the word "Yingying", such as "Nineteen Ancient Poems · Roundabout Morning Glory Star": "Yingying is a water, and the pulse is silent." Xin Abandoned Disease", "Qingyu Case, New Year's Eve": "Moth snow willow golden wisps, laughter and dark incense go.". Then there is Sun Fu's "Mid-Autumn Song" chanting", "Not only love the color, but also go to the high platform". And Zi Jingyi's "Send Gu Qiji To the North": "A piece of peach blossom water, Yingying sends a passenger boat". As for "Yingying" is the source of the color name, it is not written, but it is integrated with ancient paintings, ancient poems, and antiquities, giving people a composite aesthetic experience.
Since the "Yingying" as the color of the rainy season, indicating that this color is related to the spring water, and in the commentary, it is said that "its color is like a peach blossom reflecting the water", and the "Yingying" is directly associated with the peach blossom, which means spring, I think, you can also call "Yingying" "Peach Ying", which is a kind of spring color full of girlishness.
In traditional Chinese colors, the name of each color is unique, and each color is derived from the creation of all things in heaven and earth. Ancient poems with "Yingying" are all depicting beauty, flowing water, eye waves, and delicate flowers, and if you want to give color, it is more accurate to use peach blossom color as a figurative. The girl cardamom first blooms, full of jade, is not it a peach blossom reflecting the water? Rain is the second of the twenty-four solar terms, representing the beginning of a year of rainfall, when the spring rain is as crisp as crisp, the willows are green as smoke, the peach blossoms are also smiling in the branches, the red calyx is blooming, like the clouds, like the beauty of the water grooming.
"Yingying" is also often used in ancient poetry to describe eye waves. For example, Wang Guan's "Bu Operator• Sending Bao Haoran to Zhejiang East": "Water is the eye wave, and the mountain is the peak of the eyebrow." Want to ask pedestrians where to go? Eyebrows are full of eyes", this song uses people's eyebrows to compare landscapes, eye waves are water, eyebrow peaks are mountains, and the distant Yi people walk in the eyes of the senders, and go farther and farther away in the "eyebrows", and the figure becomes more and more blurred until it disappears. The lyricist intertwines the sending of spring and the farewell, and writes the eyebrows and the landscape together, which is really unique in conception and novel in metaphor. I found that the ancients also liked to use "Yingying" to write tears, such as Zhang Xian's "Linjiang Immortal": "The situation is separated from the beautiful people, and the tears of Yingying powder are difficult to receive." Ouyang Xiu's "TaSha Xing Hou Guan Mei Remnant": "Inch inch soft intestine, full of pink tears". Zhang Rao's "Water Dragon Yin Yan Busy Warbler Lazy Fang Remnant": "Looking at zhangtai road, the golden saddle wanders, and there are yingying tears." Too many to repeat.
In life, some people are just a pair of eyes with watery eyes. If a person's tear film is healthy and the liquid is sufficient, there will be a sense of water and light, and people with thick tear film will see who has spring water in their eyes and the feeling of watching autumn waves. That pair of eyes with a pulse of affection, casually looking at you, makes people feel that the love is deeply rooted, and if you cry again, it is even more painful. Generally speaking, such eyes, in addition to having a healthy tear film, the smooth surface of the tear film reflection is also more intense, appearing bright and concentrated; but also the entire eye is large and round, so that the amount of light is more, there will be more light reflected out, it seems that a pair of eyes are very bright and shiny. We often call such eyes peach blossom eyes, as the name suggests, like peach blossoms. The eyes are large and long, the upper eyelids are curved and curved, and the end of the eyes is relatively long. The shape is like a peach blossom petal, the eyes are hazy and drunk, feminine and affectionate, and chuchu is pitiful. Any color word is an expression of "image", initially confined to figuration and subsequently extended to imagery. The initial image of "Yingying" is a peach blossom reflecting water, and the extended image is a loving eye.
It seems that in the future, when I read those ancient poems that are "full of pink tears", I will read more profound meaning. Yingying tears, not only the meaning of fullness, clarity, crystal, but also the color of peach blossoms reflecting water, is the pulse of spring with affection, wave after wave of ripples, little by little into people's hearts. Yingying's eyes are like water, but not ordinary water, but the peach blossom spring water from the Book of Poetry, which accumulates in your heart drop by drop, and your heart slowly becomes empty and clear, gentle and quiet.
Tonight, I learned a color - "Yingying", a peach blossom reflecting the water, that is the color of spring.