"Traditional Chinese Colors: 100 Lectures on Color General Knowledge" by Guo Hao
Traditional Chinese Colors: Color Aesthetics in the Forbidden City by Guo Hao and Li Jianming
Two books have been published in the "Traditional Chinese Colors" series of books. Color is the presentation of color, and it is not just the presentation of color. Chinese traditional color originates from the heavens and the earth, food, clothing, shelter and transportation, the ancient Chinese not only attach importance to the presentation of plant colors and mineral colors, attach importance to the function of color, but also express color in history, etiquette, literature, art, express aesthetic values, Chinese traditional color is Chinese to see the world, the pursuit of pleasure.
Chinese color pleasure, I use four aspects to summarize: exquisite, subtle; poetic, exquisite; noble, exquisite; literary quality, good and wonderful.
The so-called exquisite and subtle is about the delicate beauty. "Xuan" is the basic color of the traditional color, it is about the beginning of the day, the moment when the sun will come out of the horizon, and the sky shows a black and red color. This moment is so short, you are waiting for the sunrise in the wild, a few minutes later you can only see the red glow that is about to erupt, and the ancients recorded the sky at that moment.
The color opposite to "Xuan" is called "纁", which is the afterglow of the red and yellow intertwined at the end of the day, the moment when the sun has just set on the horizon. A few minutes later, it gets dark. Delicate enough to record the existence of only a few minutes, Xuan and Qiao became an important role in the traditional Chinese color. In most dynasties, the clothes worn by the emperor during the sacrifice were made to express Chinese's reverence for heaven and earth.
The so-called poetic and beautiful is about the beauty of rhetoric. Su Dongpo wrote in the "Chibi Fu": "In the boat where the phase and the pillow are, I don't know the whiteness of the East." Dongpo and his friends stayed on the boat after feasting and drinking, the poet got up early, he saw the faint sky on the river, the blue and white color, in the poet's pen is called "the east is white", which is what the poet said in the endowment of nature."
Wang Bo wrote in the "Preface to the Pavilion of King Teng": "The water is exhausted and the cold pool is clear, and the smoke condenses and the twilight mountain is purple." The young poet stood in front of the sunset mountain, the mist and smoke and the afterglow solidified together, giving the mountain a thin layer of purple, and he was thrilled to write into "Twilight Mountain Purple". Whether it is the real color or the poet's imagination, this is the unique poetry and beauty of Chinese characters.
The so-called noble and exquisite is about the beauty of abundance. The meaning of the word "bird meat is fat", the profundity of Chinese culture provides a fertile soil of traditional colors, and the noble qi is our cultural self-confidence. The palace people of the Southern Tang Dynasty Li Hou Lord forgot the dyed clothes in the courtyard, the dew at night hit, the color of the clothes the next day became a blue-green color that had never been seen before, and the blue color of the dew in the sky was dyed, so it was named "Tianshui Bi", "Since the palace competes for dew, dyeing the blue to clothe".
The inner weaving and dyeing bureau of the Ming court dyed a "new color" in the spring, and the eunuch Liu Ruoyu said in the "Zhi Zhongzhi" that this color was like the light of the sea "like white and reddish", so it was called "Haitianxia". Wearing the underwear of "Hai Tianxia", it is necessary to cover the outside with a "azure bamboo green" shirt, and this beautiful red and green match is "Se Se Ripple Lining Hai Xia". This kind of exquisiteness of traditional colors is the nobility salvaged from culture, with the long charm of history.
The so-called literary quality and goodness are about the beauty of accessibility. Literary quality comes from literary quality, "quality is better than wen zeye, wen sheng quality is history, literary quality is polite, and then gentleman", temperament suppresses cultivation will lose restraint, cultivation suppresses temperament will not be grounded, temperament and cultivation have reached a balance, there is the perfection of a gentleman.
The Japanese call the apple "Lin Zhen", Lin Yu is the ancient Chinese preserved in China to Japan, the wild apples in the forest will attract birds to peck, which has "Lin Yu"; the birds that come to peck attract people who come to catch birds, and the birds in the forest are captured, which becomes "Forest Catch". Xu Gan's "Seven Parables" says, "White is more poisonous than the poison, red is over the tackle", and the color of the lean flesh is like the catch dan. "Dan Dan" is the color of wild red apples. This statement is full of politeness, natural temperament, and cultivation and knowledge, in order to say such an elegant word.
Xuanzang said in the "Records of the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty": "The water is colored with waves, and the waves are sweaty." What color is "Canglang"? According to the information of the Qing Dynasty, Bi Yuan annotated the "Lü's Spring and Autumn" and said: "The wolf, the blue is also." In the bamboo 'Cang', in the sky 'Canglang', in the water 'Canglang'". "Canglang" is the color of bamboo that is born in spring, because Cangyi is the bamboo that is born in spring. Reading this, I am reminded of a kind of openness - "the water of the waves is clear, you can muddy me; the water of the waves is muddy, you can muddy my feet." When there is a clear passage between temperament and cultivation, this person also becomes accessible, and the more people in this world are well-connected, the more good there are.
The beauty of delicacy, the beauty of rhetoric, the beauty of abundance, and the beauty of accessibility are not so much the aesthetics of traditional Chinese colors as the aesthetics of traditional Chinese culture.
Originating from the traditional Chinese colors of heaven and earth, food, clothing, shelter and transportation, drifting down along the long river of history, to today's shore, if you do not explain the words "XuanXuan", "Twilight Purple", "Tianshui Bi" and "Dan dan", the reader may be confused. Speaking of color, we should first restore these words to the original face of all things in heaven and earth, food, clothing, shelter and transportation, and only by not getting lost in the jungle night of vocabulary can we clearly see the horizon sunrise of traditional colors.
Needless to say "Xuan", even if the color name is still in use like "Honey", it is not easy to explain. I found the word "honey and" in Zhang Zhongjing's "Treatise on Typhoid Fever and Miscellaneous Diseases", and in 11 squares such as kidney qi pill fang and turtle shell decoction pill fang, the original text all mentioned "refining honey and pills".
What is the relationship between this "honey and pill" and "honey color", at first it is not clear; until entering the field of Chinese medicine, it is not understood that it is not "honey and pills", but "refining honey" and "pills", which are two actions. Honey refining, heating and boiling honey to make it viscous; and pills, the refined honey and medicinal powder are mixed proportionally and grouped into Chinese medicine pills. Boiling honey to a certain heat, the honey becomes yellow-white, the hand twisted honey is sticky, but can not pull out the white wire, the honey under this fire is called refining honey, the color of the honey is honey.
Then there is like the TV series "Zhen Huan Biography" and "Langya List" mentioned in the "Snail Dai", not a long conch-shaped cosmetics, or the cosmetic formula added conch powder, if so hopeful, the similar "Green Sparrow Head Dai" formula is not to put in the Green Sparrow Bird Head. Yan Shigu's "Sui Testament" records an anecdotes about the Sui Emperor: "(Wu Daixianshan painted the long moth eyebrow) by the temple foot woman to compete for the long moth eyebrow, and the Sigong official Gave The Snail Dai Wu Huo, the number moth green. The snails were out of Persia, and each one was worth ten gold. After the enlistment was insufficient, it was given copper dai, and the du dai immortal was given a snail dai endlessly. "Luo Zi Dai is an expensive mineral pigment imported from Persia, moth green, the same color as the snail cyan of the snail shell, so it is called Luo Zi Dai. Similarly, the green finch head is the same color as the green finch head.
"Pine Blossom" is a color name that is still in use, but if you do not restore the actual object, the color of "Pine Flower" is confusing. The pine flower colors found on the Internet are yellow with green and light green. When I checked the color of pine flowers, I met an expert who was good at using pine pollen as a tonic, and she said: "The shaken pine pollen is as delicate as the skin color of a baby." Then, seeing the actual product of the pine flower, which is the bone of the male branch of the pine tree when it draws new shoots in the spring, back to the beginning of things, which is the most convincing, the pine flower is tender yellow.
The salvaged color name must be restored back to all things in heaven and earth, food, clothing, shelter and transportation, in order to know why. "Green Shen" is mentioned in Fang Yizhi's "Tongya", "Green Shen, saying that its color is deep and dark, and it is now bitter green". This bitter green is also difficult to understand, how deep it is, how bitter it is green. Looking through the ancient texts, the text has "Green Shen Pipe" and Wu has "Green Shen Gun", which seems to be thick and heavy color objects. Until the "History of the South" was found, "Ren Fang died in the official, Emperor Wu heard it, Fang ate the Green Shen Melon in the Western Garden, threw it on the plate, and the sorrow could not overcome itself", it turned out to be so! Green Shen is the color of dark green watermelon peel. Similar things, "silver red" found "baked silver", "Qi Zi" found "pulse red snail", only to come out of the water.
Everything must be returned to the original place, so that it will not be hearsay. Dyes, pigments, lacquers, paints, inks, pigments, their corresponding fabrics, murals, Chinese paintings, porcelain, lacquerware, architecture, paper, food... And so on, this is the vast world of traditional Chinese colors, but also the future podium of "color literacy".
Guo Hao Source: China Youth Daily
Source: China Youth Daily