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The civilizational autonomy of China is beyond doubt. Chinese culture is vast and beautiful. However, we know very little about her. First, the language barrier is difficult to overcome (Chinese learners will attest to how difficult it is to learn the required number of characters in order to fluently read scientific and fiction literature). Secondly, in order to understand Chinese specifics, it is necessary to move away from Eurocentricity (forget, for example, west and east are not the right and left of Europe) - which is very difficult to do, because the study takes place primarily on the books of Russian and European authors. However, let's try to immerse ourselves in the history and symbolism that arose within the framework of Chinese civilization.

Perhaps no other country in the world is as passionate about color as China. Hidden meaning black, red, yellow will follow you everywhere.

All "ten thousand things" in nature have their own color. IN real life We meet a huge number of colors and their shades. As scientists have proven through the analysis of the color spectrum, there are more than 10 million different colors in the world. But for the Chinese, the situation is much simpler: they believe that only five colors are basic, namely: black, red, blue, white and yellow. These colors are recognized as "pure" (open, pure), and all the others are nothing more than various combinations of the mentioned basic colors, mixed in different quantities and proportions. The Chinese call these colors "mixed". "Pure colors" signify fidelity to tradition, stability, constancy and nobility, while "mixed colors" are considered vulgar and even base. So, in ancient China, by color women's clothing it was possible to determine which of the women was the wife and which was the concubine. According to the regulations, wives were to wear only "pure colors", and concubines were allowed to wear "mixed colors" outfits.

Why do the Chinese single out the five colors mentioned above? This is dictated by ideas about the structure of the universe.The symbolism of color should be viewed through the prism of the traditional system of five elements. So, the Chinese divided the world (and all its components) into five categories: wood, fire, metal, water and earth. Each of the elements was a symbol of the life processes taking place both in man and in the universe. Colors are also part of this system.

Let's imagine for a second what surrounded China in antiquity.
On the east - the endless forests of the valley of the lower reaches of the Yellow River. The element of the East - wood, color -blue-green . It corresponds to youth, spring, wind.
On the south - the hot sun, the element of the south - fire, its color -Red . It is the color of joy, happiness, summer.
On the west are the highest mountain peaks in Asia. And in the foothills, metals were once mined. Therefore, metal corresponds to the west. For the Chinese long time the west was associated with danger - warlike tribes, the ancestors of the Tibetans, lived in the mountains, nomads came from the west. And the cold snowy peaks determined the colorWhite . Cold winds blow from there, this is the color of mourning, autumn.
North associated with waterblack color - there, to the north of the Great Plain, unknown dark rivers flowed (it is no coincidence that in Chinese Amur sounds like heilongjiang 黑龙江 - black dragon river The north also symbolized winter and the moon. But this is not the color of mourning - it is the color of a secret transformation (as nature rests in winter, but harbors magnificent awakening and growth in spring). That is why Chinese scientists wore black clothes.
And finally the center is China , it corresponds toyellow color. This connection is easily explained: the soils in China are loess, yellow in color (they consist of compacted tiny particles of sand brought by the wind from the deserts of Central Asia).

Yellow symbolizes the Center of the world, the Celestial Empire. Yellow is the designation of the element Earth, which has the properties of fertility, nutrition and transformation, because the seed thrown into the earth, before ripening, was subjected to changes in the process of growth. The center, the earth - these were manifestations of the "original", undergoing changes in the "circle of life transformations". These properties extended to the color scheme. pointing to heaven and earth, yellow meant stability, fertility, support, law, success and eternity, and was also associated with the imperial family. During the Qing Dynasty, only the emperor was allowed to wear yellow clothes. Of the mythological characters corresponding to this color, one can name the Yellow (imperial) dragon with five claws (which indicates power over the whole world) and the Yellow Emperor Huangdi (the first ruler who united most of China under his rule).

In feudal China, yellow was considered the most revered color, for which there are several explanations. According to one version, the Chinese belong to the Mongoloid race and have a yellowish skin tone, so the love for yellow is simply “in their blood”. According to another version, precisely because the Chinese civilization originated in the basin of the river, which is called the Huang He (Yellow River), this river is called the "mother" of all Chinese. In addition, the first proto-state in China was formed in the region of the Loess Plateau, in the central part of the Yellow River basin, where the lands are highly fertile. After all, this river has regularly flooded for thousands of years, leaving loess sediments and gradually forming an accumulative plain. The loess plateau is the cradle of the Chinese nation and, at the same time, an integral part of Chinese culture, and therefore the yellow color of fertile deposits is endowed with a special meaning in the Celestial Empire.

For a long time in China, it was believed that only emperors or very noble people had the right to wear yellow clothes and accessories. The yellow color symbolized a noble origin and chosenness, therefore, the emperor's ceremonial clothes with the image of a dragon - the mythical progenitor of the Chinese nation, as well as the imperial palace were just yellow. During the Qing Dynasty (1636-1911), the emperor granted yellow magua jackets (a jacket worn over a robe) as a mark of distinction to officials who had significant merit. Among the people, yellow was valued and respected, as it is the color of gold. In this regard, many words and expressions associated with the yellow (gold) color appeared in the language. For example, the Chinese endowed the word “golden” with a figurative meaning “happy, auspicious” and began to call those periods of development and life of the state that were characterized by stability and prosperity: the “golden era”.

As such, blue and light blue did not exist in the color scheme of the Chinese, they merged with green. blue-zgreen (qing) denoted the east, by its natural essence represented the wind, by the element it belonged to the elements of the tree. The properties of the tree are the ability to grow (transition from passive yin to active yang), and therefore with the birth of a new life.

The divine character here is the Turquoise Dragon (Qinglong), which was a protector from evil spirits and was often depicted in well-wishing pictures as a source of various wealth. Blue color, on the one hand, is a symbol of Heaven (the temple of Heaven was always covered with tiles of the color of heavenly azure, the clothes of dignitaries participating in the worship of heaven should have been the same color), but on the other hand, it was considered to bring misfortune. After all, the wind is fickle, although it can be humane and fair. The dragon also has wisdom and great power, but, in addition to blessings, it can also bring destruction.

Blue is the most fickle color that can change at any time. Sometimes it "turns" into green - the color of Nature, full of vital energy and strength, and sometimes - in a blue-green or dark blue color (blue-black), can turn into purple.

Red symbolized the south with the riot of life in all its manifestations, corresponding to the elements of fire (maximum vitality and activity) and the sun. Fire and everything that corresponds with it are characterized by heat, heat, and upward aspiration. The mythological animal here is the Red Bird (Phoenix), meaning wisdom, beauty, auspiciousness, and the character is the Fiery Emperor Yan-di (Shen-Nong), who taught people to grow bread, and is a healer god by association that the sun is life. Therefore, in the most joyful moments of life, the Chinese preferred red clothes, for example, the bride and wedding paraphernalia were always red, conveying the vitality of the sun and fire. Such power scares away evil spirits and brings good luck to the house and harmonizes the general atmosphere. If, according to the Chinese, a red thread is wound on the child's hand, it will protect the baby from the evil eye.

Expression红火 (red fire) means that your life is developing like a red flame. And this is very good!火了 means "popular"火爆 (fire and explosion) - a place with a bunch of people or a book / movie with elements of an action movie. Recall that red is the traditional color for Chinese holidays and parties.
The Chinese consider red the color of celebration, festivities, weddings. In the representation of the Chinese, this color is a symbol of joy, auspicious signs, success and celebration. During wedding ceremony the bride, according to tradition, should be dressed in a red robe, and on the Spring Festival ( New Year according to the traditional Chinese calendar) the Chinese glue paired hieroglyphic inscriptions with good wishes written on red paper on the doors of houses, hang red lanterns everywhere. Rewarding those who distinguished themselves in study and work, the Chinese present red flowers.

When an enterprise or production, having achieved profits, pays dividends to its shareholders, this is called "sharing the red profit." Red color represents enthusiasm, justice and symbolizes the fullness of energy. If a person has a blush on his cheeks, then this person is healthy and cheerful. The Chinese ideas about the color red, its meaning and the attitude of the Chinese towards it are perfectly reflected in such films by the famous Chinese film director Zhang Yimou as "Red Kaolian" and "Light the Red Lanterns".

White color personified the west - a place where chaos and death reign. This color is controversial: he called the natural essence - cold and the element - metal (a symbol of the beginning of the decline from yang to yin), and was associated simultaneously with treachery and purity. The animal of the West is the White Tiger (Baihu), which, on the one hand, is the lord of the world that is destructive to man, and on the other hand, it is the protector of people from evil forces and the guardian of the land of the dead. Therefore, the image of a white tiger is often a talisman, and therefore often found on various decorative and household items.

White is a color associated with old age, autumn, wilting, i.e. completion of the cycle and going beyond the edge of the world. Therefore, the white color in clothes means mourning, and emphasizes the significance of items as related to the funeral.

Black color was the color of the north and was associated with something mysterious, although it carried the shade of death (winter). The element for this color was water (as a minimal manifestation of activity, passive yin), which has the properties of fluidity, coolness, and the ability to move backward. Here the main character is the warrior Xuanwu, the "black turtle", which is a symbiosis of a snake and a turtle, and also identified with the mythical ruler Zhuan-xu, who placed a separation (breaking the connection) between earth and sky, which is why people stopped ascending to heaven.

Mystery is the destiny of scientists, the snake is wisdom, the turtle is longevity, water penetrates everywhere, remembers everything. From these images, the definition of black is formed - knowledge and learning, deepening into the unknown.

Now, I hope, our understanding of color in Chinese culture has become more extensive. In the second part, the symbolism of color will be revealed in everyday life.
And the fairy tale about Chinese culture does not end, there are also ornaments, patterns and traditional costumes ahead of us.

Bibliography:
Color in China.

I was born and raised in the south of Buryatia, on the very border between Russia and Mongolia, and I never thought about the shape of the eyes of my fellow countrymen until they asked me what nationality I was! After that followed at least interest Ask About, why do asians have narrow eyes? Indeed, why?

Why do Asians have narrow eyes?

This type of eye is called epicanthus- a special physiological phenomenon when a fold upper eyelid covers the lacrimal tubercle. As you can see, physiologically, this is just a different structure of the eye, which, by the way, is found not only among Asians, but also among some African tribes.

The presence of epicanthus in a number of peoples still does not have a scientifically substantiated answer, there are only assumptions. After studying articles on the Internet and interviewing my friends and acquaintances, I came to the conclusion that there is many versions and explanations of the origin of this feature, which can be divided into several blocks:

religious version;
evolutionary version;
mythical version.

Religion in the formation of the cut of the eyes

The Asian peoples have a parable about the origin of people. One day, after God created the world and our planet, he decided to populate it with people. Most The best way creation is to fashion figurines of people from clay and burn them. And God began to work.

blinded he figurines and put them in the oven, but something distracted the creator, and he didn’t have time to pull the figures out of the stove in time, and they burned. God sent such people to Africa.

blinded he's still figurines and sent them to the oven, but this time God pulled them out of the oven too early and the figures turned out too white. Sent by the creator of such people to Europe.

The third time, God tried hard, faces made figurines happy and smilingshining, eyes from this turned out already, but God thought it very beautiful. He put them in the oven, burned them in moderation. That's how the Asians turned out. with yellow skin and narrow eyes.

Legends and myths in the formation of the cut of the eyes

The Chinese have a legend that the progenitor of all Asians was the young man Yang Di, son of a woman and heavenly dragon. Dragons have always been symbols of victory and life for the Chinese, it is not surprising that at the dawn of civilization, many girls became their victims. Yang Di, according to the legends, did not look like ordinary people. He was more powerful, more handsome, and his face was special... He had narrow eyes.

Narrow eyes are a sign of evolution

The most reasonable scientific version adheres to the version evolution. Asians are a people living in vast steppes and deserts, where strong winds always blow with sand. Therefore, after a couple of thousand years, epicanthus appeared among the peoples living in these places.

There is also an opinion that eyes narrowed from constant squinting. Asia is the eastern countries where the sun shines brighter at sunrise than, for example, in Europe. Therefore, this defensive reaction has lain in their gene pool.

By the way, there is a third version. The occurrence of epicanthus is associated with low tolerance and fat deposition in the upper eyelid. It is known that the epicanthus is a fatty layer. In people who have enough body fat, the epicanthus is more noticeable than in others. Increased fat deposition on the face is seen in almost all children of the Mongoloid race. Scientists believe that increased fat deposition on the face in children is associated with frost protection and dry climate protection.

There is a popular misconception that Chinese yellow skin.

A typical Chinese is not at all yellower than the same Frenchman. At the first contacts of Europeans with the Far East, there was no mention of any "yellow race". “Like us” - such a characteristic was given by the eminent traveler from Italy Andrea Corsali, who visited China back in 1515.

A few years later, the privy adviser of the German emperor Transylvanus, taking as a basis the stories of Portuguese sailors, described the Chinese as “People with white skin, with a high level of social organization ... in the likeness of us Germans.”

When mankind was divided into races in the 18th century, the first mention of the yellow color of the skin appeared. An intermediate race was needed between blacks in the south and whites in the north. It was then that the Indians first turned up, and later the Chinese were appointed “yellow”. At that time, the book of Professor of Medicine I.F. Blumenbach. In it, he mentioned the "Caucasian race" with white skin, the Mongolian with yellow, the American "red as copper" and black Africans.

These delusions of mankind were so cleverly imposed on him, it can be more precisely said from the work of Ilf and Petrov - "And then Ostap suffered ...". At the desk, taking as a basis only assumptions (for example, it was argued that Asians are more likely to suffer from jaundice - hence they remain yellow for the rest of their lives), a purely subjective opinion was imposed on the whole of humanity.
On top of all this, the theorists who invented this classification did not see anyone but Europeans in the eye.
Often the basis of their assumptions was the representation of the Chinese themselves.

“A yellow veil is thrown over all the childhood memories,” writes the last Chinese emperor Pu Yi in his notes. from which I ate and drank were yellow ... There was nothing around me that did not wear a yellow tint.
This love of the Chinese for the yellow color (“yellow river” of the Yangtze, the mythological “yellow emperor”, in general, everything big and spiritual was yellow) seemed to push European classifiers to invent such a “yellow race”, despite all these theories, the skin of the Chinese did not turn yellow at all.

Another misconception.

All Chinese are the same.

The wife of the last emperor Pu Yi, the only ruler of China who dared to leave the country and visit Europe, shares her memories of how difficult it was for her to participate in official ceremonies or give receptions for the sole reason that it was difficult for her to distinguish faces - in particular, the faces of members royal family or relatives of the German emperor.
For Koreans or Japanese who first arrived in Europe or the New World, this problem also seems intractable at first.
So this is another prejudice and nothing more.

Great delusions of mankind. 100 immutable truths in which everyone believed Mazurkevich Sergey Alexandrovich

Yellow-skinned Chinese

A yellow veil is thrown over all childhood memories. Yellow was the glazed tiles on the roofs of the houses, yellow was the stretcher on which I was carried, the lining of my dress and hats, the bedspreads ... and the plates from which I ate and drank were yellow ... There was nothing around me that would not have a yellow tint .

The last Chinese Emperor Pu Yi

It just so happened that people belonging to the Mongoloid race are called yellow-skinned. We will not talk about the ethics and political correctness of such a term, we will consider only its factual component. And it is such that the Chinese, Japanese, Mongols, Vietnamese and other inhabitants of Asia, when carefully examined, in the literal sense of the word, turn out to be no yellower than Russians, British or French.

Here it would be appropriate to recall that the first Europeans who met the Chinese did not report anything about the yellow color of their skin. On the contrary, in the 16th century, Transylvanus, the secret adviser to the German emperor, described the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire as follows: "These are white-skinned people with a very high level of social organization - like us Germans." Another European is the Italian traveler Andrea Corsali, who visited China in 1515, looking at local residents, exclaimed: “Di nostra qualita!”, Which means “Like us!”.

The misconception about yellow-skinned Asians, widespread throughout the world, was created by armchair science in the 18th century. Then scientists decided to divide humanity into races. The northern peoples were classified as a white race, the southern peoples as a black one, and since an intermediate between these two races was also needed, the population of India was assigned to it, and a little later the Chinese. They called it yellow, because, according to the creators of this theory, yellow is, as it were, in the middle between white and black. At that time, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a professor of medicine from Göttingen, was one of the main authorities in the scientific community. He compared the color of the skin of the American race with copper, and the Mongolian with ripe ears of wheat, like boiled quince or dried lemon peels. In addition, he explained that Asians have yellow skin due to the fact that they often suffer from jaundice. The most interesting thing is that, according to contemporaries, the professor himself had never seen either an Indian or a Chinese in his life.

Another, no less widespread misconception about Asians is to attribute to them not only yellow skin, but also narrow eyes and strabismus. However, the opinion that the so-called slanting eyes are a distinctive physical feature of the Mongols, Japanese, Chinese and other representatives of the Mongoloid race is not true. To characterize people belonging to this race as cross-eyed is not only unethical, but just as wrong as characterizing people of the European race as long-nosed, as, for example, the same people of the Mongoloid type believe.

The "strabismus" of the Mongoloids is just an optical illusion. It arises from the fact that representatives of the Mongoloid race have a less prominent nose, while Caucasians usually mentally "tie" their eyes to their nose. In Mongoloids, the nose starts lower, which is why it seems to us that the eyes are somewhat slanted.

The idea of Asians as "narrow-eyed" is also explained by optical illusion. In fact, the eye socket itself in the Mongoloids is even larger than in the Caucasians. But representatives of the Mongoloid race have the so-called Mongoloid fold of the upper eyelid, which fills the "empty" space of the orbit. Since we are accustomed to a different ratio of the size of the eye and the orbit (and we are used to consider its size constant), then we have the illusion that the eyes of Mongoloids are narrower than those of Caucasoids.

Interestingly, Asians themselves do not perceive European eyes as wider. Nevertheless, the Japanese, Chinese, Koreans and other Mongoloids, having first left for Europe or America, hardly distinguish between Caucasians. Thus, the wife of the last Chinese emperor Pu Yi, the only ruler of China who left his country and visited Europe, writes in her memoirs how difficult it was for her to participate in official ceremonies due to the fact that it was difficult for her to distinguish faces - for example, persons of members of the royal family of England or relatives of the German emperor.

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Chinese civilization is one of the oldest civilizations in the world and dates back about 4,000 years. When people roamed the world in small tribes, robbing and destroying everything that came in their way for the sake of profit, the Chinese already then created, tirelessly created their own world, culture and traditions.

Every day, the slaves painstakingly built the houses of their emperors and plowed the land under the scorching sun of the Celestial Empire, which made their skin yellowish, a little dark and wrinkled.

It was since the division of people into classes that the history of the “syndrome white man» from the Chinese:

If your skin is dark- so you belong to the class of slaves, then this is karma that you must bear all your life, passing from generation to generation.

If your skin is pale- you are privileged, you are one of millions - you are the one who is called to rule and rule.

After all, it is not for nothing that the Chinese emperors always wore long clothes, leaving sunshine the opportunity to admire only their face, and then only when they left their sun umbrellas at home.

Here is the answer to the question "what is it, Chinese skin color" or " Why do Chinese people have yellow skin?«.

Time flew steadily, slavery was long gone, and the customs and foundations that had been established for thousands of years remained unchanged.

The Chinese, at the sight of a foreigner, can calmly come up and instead of “Ni hao” excitedly say: “Oh God, what an incredibly beautiful woman you have. White skin!" (although my skin is perfectly normal average male skin, I don’t go to spas or even use scrubs). Some may ask the recipe for your success - to which I always answer: "Eat even more spicy and fried, and then you can definitely forget about white clean skin."

For you to understand, the Chinese eat “la jiao” (hot pepper) with all the dishes and, in addition, pour all kinds of sauces. As a result, a large part of the population experiences the problem of acne.

Chinese people walk with umbrellas in sunny weather

They are mostly girls between the ages of 16 and 40 who are trying to maintain their "privilege" and be whiter than white.

Here I want to tell you that having been in the south of China in the summer, you yourself will begin to understand the whole essence of umbrellas as a means of protection from the sun. The heat is such that asphalt melts, and you can fry eggs on concrete.

To be in "trend" some " white people of China» buy themselves a foundation indecently, in my opinion, white. On the street, you can often meet a resident of the Celestial Empire strolling carelessly, whose face seems to be covered with sunblock. The face is so white that one might accidentally mistake it for a mime. smeared foundation not only girls, but also guys, so don't be scared by any means. In addition, in all Chinese stores you will always find a huge range of skin whitening products: scrubs and creams, masks and lotions, magic washcloths and brushes, and all of them, as one, are designed to make your skin whiter than white.

About the resorts

The first thing the Chinese always do is buy themselves the most expensive sunscreen. They are smeared with them one on top of the other, apparently the result in this way, according to their logic, will be better.

Around the city, every third billboard contains advertisements for beauty salons that offer to make your skin look like the skin of foreigners (there is always a photo of a Chinese woman and a foreigner in the picture, for persuasiveness).

Before coming to China, I never could have thought that the Chinese really have such a complex as skin color. But it reaches such proportions that sometimes you even start to think: "Guys, what are you doing? Rejoice in what God has given you."

Yellow Chinese. Chinese people have yellow skin Why Asians have yellow skin