The earliest pictograph of the character 鹿 lu for ‘deer’ is found on a tortoise plastron burnt to crack for divination. Though it is by no means anatomically accurate, the pictograph exhibits the most clearly recognisable characteristics of the animal. …
Summer solstice, the longest day in the year, occurs in the fifth month of the Chinese calendar and Chinese astronomy believes that it stands for the apogee of the yang force in the annual cycle. Ancient philosophers warned in Classic …
In the oracle bone script, the earliest form of the Chinese characters, the pictograph ‘福 (fu)’ consists of a pair of hands holding a wine jar in front of a sacred ancestral symbol. It means that, if the ancestors were …
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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The tiger has impressed the Chinese for being ferocious, valiant, and awesome. Numerous imaginations, legends, and images have been stimulated by the fascinating impact of this majestic beast on the nation’s psyche ever since antiquity. Shuowen jiezi (说文解字), or Explanations …
The ‘five supernatural beasts’ include the dragon, the phoenix, the tiger, the qilin and the tortoise. This notion was found to be first mentioned by Du Yu 杜预 (222–285), a third-century Confucian scholar. He annotated the ancient Chinese chronicle Spring …
The tree commonly referred to in English as the flowering plum in fact belongs to the species Prunus mume, which is part of the apricot family. With the pine and bamboo, the plum is one of the Three Friends of …
No animal has exercised as much influence over the destiny of China as the horse, which was central to the power of the various mounted nomadic peoples who dominated north China during the Period of Disunion (220–581CE), and the entire …
During the Tang and Song dynasties, there were large dragon–carp (鳌鱼) reliefs on the steps in front of the imperial palace. In the era of imperial examinations, the scholar who scored number one would stand on the head of the …
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The ‘Nine Autumn Flowers’ (Jiu Qiu Tu 九秋图) is a distinguished pattern in traditional Chinese decorative art, frequently employed to symbolise the richness and splendour of the autumn season. This theme features nine varieties of flowers, although not in a …