Pun Design: Five + Bat + auspicious character of ‘Longevity 寿 or 壽’ Punning Details： – ‘蝠 fu’, the Chinese name for bats, puns on ‘福 fu’, meaning ‘good fortune’. – ‘wu fu 五蝠 five bats’, is homophonous with ‘wu …
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Pun Design ： Bat + Peach Punning Details： – ‘fu 蝠’ in ‘bian fu 蝙蝠’ is a pun on ‘fu 福’ which means ‘good fortune’, ‘luck’, or ‘happiness’; – Peach has a nickname ‘shou tao 寿桃’ meaning ‘longevity peaches’, is …
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Guo Ziyi (郭子仪 697–781), a native of Huazhou 华州 (a county near present-day Xi’an 西安), was the most prominent general-statesman of the Tang dynasty. For the great part of nearly thirty years and under a succession of four different emperors, …
Continue reading “A Bed Piled with Hu Sceptres (Guo Ziyi’s Grand Birthday Party)”
In this motif composition, the eight Daoist Immortals (ba xian 八仙) are not depicted in figural images, but rather are represented by their distinctive attributes respectively. The fan stands for Zhongli Quan 钟离权, the sword stands for Lv Dongbin 吕洞宾, …
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Chinese people deeply respect the elderly and traditionally consider a long existence to be one of the most important blessings in a person’s life. Here are many examples of how artists have combined a variety of longevity symbols to reinforce the potency of this concept.
More often than not, traditional Chinese motifs or symbols are not receiving their deserved attention, being given simplistic or inadequate labels and inaccurate explanations in our museums, catalogues, or even scholarly writing. The treatment of many pictorial representations of the thousand-year-old literary anecdote ‘A bamboo counter is being added to the house in the sea (海屋添筹 hai wu tian chou)’ is a case in point.
In this scene, there are several Chinese longevity symbols such as the crane, the generic immortal, the pine tree, and the deer, etc. However, the proper meaning of this particular scene is not a simple assemblage of individual symbols. It …
Continue reading “May the length of your life be eternally prolonged!”
How the daylily, whose Chinese name is ‘xuan 萱’, came to become a symbol for motherhood in Chinese culture is explained in the blog ‘Cultural Differences in the Symbolic Meaning of Lily’. The daylily can be combined with butterflies to …
Continue reading “Happy Birthday, Mother!”
Dr Yibin Ni has discussed the differences of symbolic meanings of lily between Western and Chinese cultures in his unique research, bringing new insight into pictorial art.
According to the oldest dictionary in China, Shuowen jiezi 说文解字 (Explanations of Simple Graphs and Analyses of Composite Graphs), the earliest version of the character for ‘crane’ is a composite graph consisting of a pictograph for a bird, the present-day …
The Chinese deeply respect the elderly and consider a long existence – ideally accompanied by health and happiness – to be one of the five most important blessings (wufu 五福) in a person’s life, which were believed by the ancients …
The Chinese character ‘tian 天’ from the phrase ‘tianzhu 天竹’ for ‘nandina’ is both a homophone and homograph of the character ‘tian 天’ for ‘heaven’. The character ‘xian 仙’ in the phrase ‘shuixian 水仙’ for ‘narcissus’, is both a homophone …
Continue reading “Heavenly immortals and fairies are celebrating your birthday”
The peach fruit usually symbolises longevity or immortality in Chinese pictorial art. The origin of this idea started from legends dating back to the third century. Read Dr Yibin Ni‘s research article for related literatures and legendary stories from ancient …
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In Zhuangzi (庄子), an ancient Chinese text from the late Warring States period (476–221 BCE) and one of the two foundational texts of Daoism, the Queen Mother of the West (Xiwangmu 西王母) was mentioned as a deity who ‘obtained the Dao (the Way)’. …
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This is an overview by Dr Yibin Ni on how the topic of ‘The Birthday Party of the Queen Mother of the West’ was depicted on Chinese artworks, from woodblock print during Ming dynasty to scroll painting and porcelains in Qing dynasty.
Lily flowers and butterflies form a pun rebus picture known as ‘Xuān Dié Tú 萱耋图’, meaning ‘May mother live up to a ripe old age’. ‘Xuan 萱’ in the picture title comes from ‘xuan cao 萱草’, the Chinese name for …
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‘Xuan 萱’ comes from ‘xuan cao 萱草’, the Chinese name for ‘lily’. In traditional Chinese decorative arts, lily flowers symbolise motherhood and maternal bonds with children, and they figure prominently on articles created for mothers, expecting or being a birthday …
‘San gong 三公’ are the ‘Three Top Lords in the Imperial Court’. The ‘gong 公’ from the Chinese name ‘gong ji 公鸡’ for ‘rooster’ puns on the Chinese name for ‘lord’ and three roosters in the picture represent the three …
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Is choosing a gift for your mother a difficult task? Not so much if your mother is a big fan of Chinese art. In traditional Chinese decorative arts, there are various images symbolising or referring motherhood. Lily flower is a typical example…