By Ash Zhang
“黄生阴阳” （Yellow generates Ying and Yang）
In Chinese culture, Ying and Yang represent the duality of quite literally everything in the universe. It gives a bit of insight into how important the colour yellow is, and to understand how this is the case, you must take a deep dive into the yellow representing 土, or the earth, and the 五行 (wu xing), or 5 elements, and how it ties into much of the culture and understanding of many many things.
“There are no more than five primary colours, yet in combination, they produce more hues that can ever be seen” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War
This quote is accompanied by the same format talking about 5 musical notes and 5 cardinal tastes. This is probably extremely foreign to Western audiences, as for them there are 3 primary colours, Red, Yellow, and Blue, 8 notes in an octave, and 4 taste qualities, sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. (yes, there are technically 5 but legitimately everybody forgets umami).
Yellow - this colour in China represents the imperial family and wealth. It takes a similar cultural meaning to royal purple in Western society, made with shellfish and expensive dye to its scarcity and manual labour costs. Yellow, along with the dragons that were tied inextricably to the imperial family at the time, were symbols that would result in commoners being punished if they dared to wear them. The Zhou dynasty established such etiquette and ranks of clothing, patterns, and colours. Confucius once said, “There cannot be two suns in the sky, nor two emperors on the earth” and thus imperial yellow became forbidden to others. This rule officially came about during the Yuan dynasty and covered many other patterns and symbols, such as Qilin, Male Feng Huang, White rabbit etc. During the Ming dynasty, in an attempt to emulate its predecessor, an emperor established that 3 clawed dragons were for commoners, 4 for nobility and high officials, and 5 for emperors. If anyone else used 5, the entire clan of the offender was punishable by execution for treason.
To understand the obsession with the colour yellow you need to first understand the values placed behind certain other colours and their origins. 五行, the 5 phrases, represented elements with many different associates tied to them: Fire (红 – red – south – vermilion bird, summer), Water (黑 – black – north – black tortoise – winter ), Wood (青– blue-green* – east - azure dragon - spring), Metal (白 – white – west – white tiger - autumn) and Earth (黄- Yellow – centre – yellow dragon - change of seasons). Within the phrases of waxing and waning of yin and yang, changes of seasons, peaks and troughs of energy and changes in climate, yellow forever remains the balance between the different colours and seasons. These originally referred to the 5 major planets and the 5 forces of Earth. The interactions between these different elements are also incredibly interesting, with 相生 – inner-promoting, 相泄 – weakening, 相乘 – destruction, 相侮 – counteracting. These phrases apply to more things than you would expect in culture, certainly more than I originally anticipated. It is not only linked to seasons and elements, but cosmology, Fengshui, Chinese medicines (tastes, senses, organs), 十二律（shi er lü, the 12 fundamental notes other scales are constructed around), from which 5 notes pulled from in the basic pentatonic scale pitch, the 5 steps in tai chi and many others.
*(technically traditional Chinese does not have a word separate for blue and green, as seen in some other cultures. But modern Chinese does, in 绿 and 蓝)
If you grew up listening to Chinese mythology, you would know that 女娲 – nu wa, is undoubtedly featured in many stories. She created humans from yellow clay, in some iterations only creating nobles out of yellow clay, and commoners from brown mud. But the story I found more interesting was related to when the battle between deities resulted in the pillars of Heaven collapsing, causing flooding, and she patched this hole with 5 coloured stones and the legs of a tortoise. I found that the connection of my childhood stories to a wider cultural background is something like finding out the history behind the Brothers Grimm and romanticism after reading Hansel and Gretel.
Colours have an incredibly big cultural meanings in China, and are strongly linked with superstition. White is reserved for funerals, black is neutral, blue-green is associated with spring, growth and harmony, and now also jealousy (linked with prostitution in imperial China). 戴绿帽子 – wearing a green hat, is a referrence to being cheated or cuckolded on. Red is often considered the most auspicious colour, often seen in festivals, lanterns, weddings and celebrations overall. This comes back to the story of the 年兽 – the beast Nian, and the red string of fate. Yellow is the colour most often shown besides red in a more modern context, combining bravery and freedom with the good luck of red.
Understanding the cultural context of yellow, due to its association with the earth, it is no surprise that it included all shades of tans, browns and oranges. 黄河- The Yellow River, is the foundation of the entire of China, running through the country from east to central/west gains its distinctive colour from its silt. (The story of 大禹治水– Da Yu stopping the flood of the Yellow River and becoming a legendary ruler of the country is forever cemented as a great legend, but I digress.) There is such importance placed on the emperor as he is the incarnation of the yellow dragon, the centre of the universe, as seen in the quote above. That in itself holds great weight because the 黄龙- yellow dragon is the 5th symbol completing the 四象-si xiang, the 4 auspicious beasts, seen earlier, attributed each to an element. Along with all the other associations, it also represents the Chinese quintessence or the 5th element. The Qing Flag itself was filled with a bright yellow behind the iconography of a dragon in white, red, green and black with 5 claws flying towards a red sun.
Yellow also features heavily in Buddhism, representing freedom from worldly cares. If you ever have the privilege of visiting a Buddhist temple, you would find monks dressed in draped yellow garbs and the statues are covered in gold, some of stone and others painted. It’s an interesting departure from the classical Western belief of yellow being the colour of cowardice and lends itself to an interesting different historical understanding of colour. Historically it originated from Italy’s “giallo” – yellow, referring to crime stories with yellow covers to published novels. Gold is universally recognised for its price and importance, but yellow often isn’t given the same importance. In modern Western contexts, it’s often just the sunny colour of joy, sunflowers and summer.
Colours often gain their significance both due to cultural meanings and costly, labour-intensive processes, making them only affordable to those who have money to spare. In ancient times, the specific shade of imperial yellow was made by tubers of Chinese foxgloves pounded into a smooth paste after being harvested at the end of the 8th lunar month. An exorbitant amount of this paste was required, mixed with a mordant of ashes to dye relatively small scraps of fabrics. The two dye vats this procedure required also had to be rust-proof. The recipe was heavily guarded and regulation of the pigment only fell in 1912 with the last empress and collapse of the Qing dynasty. Other yellow pigments used in the arts were all toxic, much like the western counterparts, such as cadmium-yellow. 石黄 – King’s yellow is made with Orpiment - arsenic sulphide (As2S3)and is undeniably toxic. The orange-red of 雄黄 is made of Realgar, also an arsenic sulphide of (As2S3 and As4S4), and is less pure than the King’s colour.
国画or 丹青 both refer to traditional painting in China on silk or rice paper, with black ink or coloured pigments, not involving any oils. With enough experience, you can tell that a painting or piece of calligraphy originates from China due to its distinctive pigments and brushstrokes, as you can with music ‘sounding’ like it’s from a specific country due to its scales and notes used*. Painting supplies were identical to the ones used to practise calligraphy, with paints and inks painstakingly handmade by each individual. Landscape painting is one of the highest regarded forms of this art, and many of these scrolls feature yellow backgrounds. Art at the time was created to benefit the viewer, as the concept of art being for the artist and emotional expression is relatively modern. The background of the paintings is brown/yellow, a result of ageing or the creation of the paper/silk. Silk scrolls are intended to be grey in colour, but due to oxidisation over time, they have become yellow. This is often another sign of Chinese art, as well as the painting techniques. In museums, in order to protect the paintings, they use warm and weak lights, so they often look even more yellow in colour. Looking deeper into the past and philosophy behind Chinese painting, its intentions, meanings and techniques, can tell you a lot about the history and culture of the time. Barring the development and trend of different artistic techniques throughout the incredibly long history of art in China, the philosophy behind art often lends painters to pay attention to their own emotions. The creation is to express instead of imitate reality, representing a conversation between humans and nature. There have been times when colour is looked down upon and the simplicity of using ink for black and white pieces was favoured, and others when this definition grew to include vibrant pieces.
*(Europe between 1600-1900 favoured the diatonic scales. Eastern music tends to be pentatonic, with China’s traditional scale for folk music being C, D, E, G, A. Turkish and Middle Eastern music have scales like Hejaz and Saba.)
Hopefully, this has been an interesting exploration of art history that would have otherwise been unknown to you. I suppose the interest in this cultural experience of art and pigments personally stems from a desire to understand the culture itself. Pigments, their use, development and cultural significance are incredibly important in trying to understand art history itself. After all, looking at a piece of history devoid of context becomes a trying task, piecing together historical clues and motifs instead of understanding the purpose and beauty of the work. If this was instead a deep dive of the 清明上河图 painted by the artist 张择瑞 - zhangzerui – ‘Along the River during the Qingming Festival’, a scroll hand-painted in the Song dynasty and perhaps one of the most influential pieces of art history, devoid of a brief exploration into the history of 国画 – traditional Chinese painting, it would remain without any tether and simply be another simple fun fact. But hopefully, if you stumble into an art gallery displaying historical Chinese works and see yellow or dragons, you will now have some more context and a broader historical knowledge that would allow you to experience the art a little better.
( If you’ve made it to the end of this very long article, congratulations. If you wan to find out more, I would recommend “Where the Mountain Meets the moon” by Grace Lin. It’s a story that I read when I was quite young, around Year 5, but it's an incredible exploration and weaves a large amount of Chinese folklore into an incredibly entertaining story. I was reminded of this story as I sat writing this article and thought so fondly about my childhood. It's a great starting spot for an exploration of folklore in a new way instead of individual stories.)