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 …
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 …
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 flower of the annual herbaceous species Papaver rhoeas has many different names in the West, such as common poppy, corn poppy, corn rose, field poppy, Flanders poppy, and red poppy. One of its names in China is yumeiren (虞美人), …
The character 龟 gui for ‘tortoise’ is explained in volume 13 of the annotated version of the oldest dictionary in China, Shuowen jiezi 说文解字注 (Explanations of Simple Graphs and Analyses of Composite Graphs). There is a quote from Liu Xiang …
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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