One of the most commonly used motifs that depicts household fowls. It has also been frequently used in pun rebuses with intended meaning of ‘good fortune’ or ‘good wishes’, as its Chinese pronunciation is ‘ji 鸡’, punning on ‘ji 吉’ …
Quail is a middle-sized bird, and is nowadays farm-raised for table food and their eggs. However, they play an interesting role in traditional Chinese art with an auspicious meaning. Quail’s Chinese name is ‘an chun’(鹌鹑). Its first character 鹌 (‘an’) …
Also named leechee, lichee, lichi, or litchi (nut). Lychee is a tall tropical evergreen tree of the soapberry family (Sapindaceae) native to southeastern China. It was recorded in the Xijing zaji (西京杂记, Miscellaneous Records of the Western Capital), a collection …
The feng phoenix, or feng huang 凤凰, which is often portrayed to resemble a peacock or golden pheasant, is the second of China’s Four Sacred Creatures (the others being the long dragon 龙, the qilin 麒麟 and the tortoise). Except …
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 …