What are the characteristics of China people's color concept reflected by the theory of five elements and five colors?

The ancient sages of China classified everything in the universe into five basic elements, which is a great and simple philosophy. This theory, which has been tested for thousands of years, has been paid more and more attention by academic circles in various countries until today. The ancients called these five elements (also five subtle qi) that make up everything in the universe "five elements", namely wood, fire, earth, gold and water. The five elements also have their own corresponding shapes, textures, sounds and colors.

These five elements can be described as follows:

Wood: green, blue and green series.

Fire: red and purple series.

Earth: yellow and khaki series.

Gold: white and milky series.

Water: black and blue series.

The concept of five elements was formed three generations ago in ancient times, and the theory of Yin-Yang and Five Elements, as a philosophical thought, originated in China during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. In ancient China, it was widely used in many fields. After numerous historical changes, today, Japanese and other western developed countries and foreign countries such as Europe and America are studying China's Five Elements Theory and Yijing culture, and applying them in many fields.

In the choice of color, Han people prefer red to yellow. Red is the most exciting, which can speed up the heartbeat and blood flow.

China is nicknamed Chixian Shenzhou, and China people are also called Chizi.

Du Fu has a poem: "The wine in Zhumen stinks, and the road has frozen bones". Zhu men is talking about famous families.

Bai Juyi has a poem: those who retreat from the DPRK in the snow are all princes. It is said that princes and nobles wear red and purple. In the Qing dynasty, high hats were often used to indicate the rank of officials, one bright red and the other dark red.

Now the titles of official documents are all bright red characters, which are called red-headed documents.

People in China mourn for white, so if someone wears a white suit for me to see now, even if I don't say it, I will think to myself, "How can I dress like a dead man at home?"

It turns out that the mainstream tradition of China's aesthetics has been passed down from generation to generation by scholars. Although there is another aesthetic inheritance among the people, it is difficult to enter the category of orthodox aesthetics because the inheritors are mostly craftsmen and spread in the countryside, and they can only become a branch as an edge of China's aesthetic thought.

However, after 1949, with the dominant position of workers, peasants and soldiers, China's literati aesthetics, which lasted for thousands of years, was almost denied. After the reform and opening-up, western aesthetic concepts and models have entered the field of vision of China people with increasing momentum, and the aesthetics of contemporary China people have undergone a thorough change, so that almost everyone takes western aesthetics as their own aesthetic standard except for remote mountain villages that have not yet been able to touch the pulse of the city.

The first thing to change is the concept of color.

In China's classical aesthetic view, we can see the characteristics of color shaping and collocation from murals, colored sculptures and paintings of past dynasties. Whether it is the grandeur of the Han and Tang Dynasties, the grandeur of the Six Dynasties, or the elegance of the Song and Ming Dynasties, the choice of colors is generally influenced by two things, one is China's concept of five elements, and the other is the "western aesthetics" introduced from India and West Asia. China people set colors as five attributes, namely, golden wood fire, water and earth, which correspond to white, green, black, red and yellow respectively. China people believe that harmonious color matching is the relationship between colors, while maintaining the balance of color intensity. For example, green and yellow are not suitable, because the five elements are wooden soil, and red and white are not suitable, because they are fire gold. Of course, it is not so simple to grasp the relationship between colors. The wisdom of our ancestors would not have made such a blunt and superficial treatment of color. What color home and clothes to choose should be related to my date, place and event of birth. Even if red and white are taken as examples, red is fire and gold on the floor, but if the position is reversed, there is no such relationship. If the area of white is much larger than that of red, then red fire can't resist white gold. If the host is a jealous person, instead, he should use more red in the bedroom and clothes to restrain the harm of gold gas to people.

China people's aesthetic of color is based on China people's belief that color is closely related to people's fortune, psychology and physical health, rather than simply "looking good".

The introduction of Indian and West Asian civilizations has injected fresh elements into the aesthetic system of China people. With the image of high nose, deep eyes, bare shoulders and bare arms, the decoration and color have a new shape. As China entered the Tang Dynasty, the communication with foreign cultures was further deepened and extensive. However, foreign civilizations that have had a far-reaching impact on China are all defined as Asian cultures today, so the core concept of cultural exchange arising from geographical proximity is not much different today.

After the May 4th Movement, European and American lifestyles and their aesthetics gradually entered the emerging comprador class and upper class in China. However, China's aesthetic system, which was in the same strain at that time, still existed intact and did not disintegrate, but a new aesthetic view under European and American civilization was born outside this system.

After 1949, as the aesthetic system of China literati, which has been inherited for thousands of years, gradually withdrew from the mainstream society, the aesthetics of farmers and craftsmen from China failed to shoulder the heavy responsibility of aesthetic education in the new period, let alone survive as a set of aesthetic standards. Finally, China's aesthetic tradition declined in the late 1970s, even after the western culture entered China in 1980s, it withdrew from the mainstream stage.

In China's 25 years of reform and opening up, European and American cultures, with ancient Greek and Roman culture as the birthplace of civilization, infiltrated into the aesthetic system of contemporary China people, and China's aesthetics, based on the development of local civilization, suffered an unprecedented impact and replacement.

This change is not forced, but accepted with enthusiasm for progress.

After the transformation, China's contemporary aesthetics showed signs of no belonging.

The concept of popular colors in China was established with the popularity of clothing. The legacy of the "Cultural Revolution" makes conformity an important symbol of people's high socialization and low naturalness. As soon as red skirts became popular, women in the street wore red skirts from their teens to their forties, and yellow skirts became popular again the next year, and the streets and alleys turned into yellow skirts neatly like work clothes. People don't have an independent thinking about aesthetics, but there is only a unified conclusion about beauty-wearing a red skirt or a yellow skirt, and most of them just follow the trend, without thinking about how this conclusion is drawn.

The understanding of color relationship is a significant difference between different cultures. Western world outlook is opposite, and color relationship pursues creating value in conflict. At present, due to the cost of living, the personality of the middle class is realized in mass-produced industrial products. The concept of standardization and the perfection of marketing system make a color relationship successfully copied and spread all over the world, and recognized by the middle class in the whole European and American society. In the second half of the last century, the release of fashion trends is no longer only meaningful to the release place, but also meaningful to the fashion consumers in the first world countries, that is, the middle class. With the pursuit of greater economic benefits becoming the common development goal of more and more countries and regions, this color concept and even aesthetics have become the mainstream in the world like other industrial products.

China's aesthetic view, which was previously based on the cosmology of harmony between man and nature, became very fragile at this time. Originally, the Han nationality's home color pays attention to accumulating cultural thickness in implication, and the color should not only express aesthetic significance, but also express the meaning of life. Now these have given way to the color processing methods in Europe and America.

Europeans and Americans used China Ming and Qing furniture with fabrics, which were widely copied by the middle class and wealthy class in China. Colorful fabrics are widely used in quaint and dignified antique furniture. Its internal choice is to use this contrast to reconcile the image of the room, so that modern colors and traditional colors form an endless interaction.

If the control of fashion color on the contemporary middle class is strong, even ubiquitous, then the control of color on the middle class at home is even stronger.

Is there any way to get the middle class out of this control and control the color more freely? Impossible, because the treatment of color is not only an aesthetic problem, but also a social problem. The contemporary middle class is in the midst of fierce social changes, and change is the norm. The birth of any round of fashion is not a product of leisure, but a weather vane of social ideological trend and public behavior changes. In order not to be eliminated by this society, the middle class follows every fashion trend. Keeping up with the changes in this society is of great significance, and color is just one of them.

Nevertheless, the attitude and treatment of the middle class towards color is still a far-reaching topic today. Since the choice and treatment of a color is the yardstick for the middle class to prove their social judgment, the standard of choice reflects the middle class's outlook on life.

Before 1999, the middle class just surfaced and entered the real estate consumption market more cautiously. With the cancellation of 1998 welfare housing distribution, the middle class can no longer expect anyone in their family to get a house from the state, no matter how reluctant they are, they have to buy a house out of their own pockets. The caution, introversion, superiority and lofty projection conveyed by high-grade ash are neither exaggerated nor simple at home, in short, they are not completely balanced. However, after 2000, with the increase of the middle class entering the real estate market, the middle class has a mass base and an economic base and formed its own taste. Slightly exaggerated color groups and aesthetic concepts have a strong momentum in themselves. Of course, more importantly, after entering the new millennium, a "dazzling" wind has blown up in European and American fashion circles, which is dazzling and has become the image of a new life. China's middle class is also a little more courageous, no longer hide. After 2002, due to the unique cultural orientation of the younger generation, that is, the young people born after 70, the color orientation of the middle class in contemporary China has changed, and those colors representing profundity, solemnity and elegance have been replaced by those representing leisure, vitality and freedom.

These color changes also mark the change of lifestyle, from more typical to today's freedom. This is especially obvious in the handling of color relations.

At first, the middle class who bought a house and decorated it was quite conservative in the use of colors. Contrast colors are rarely used at home, and all colors change in the same color system or complementary color phase. Even if contrasting colors are used, there are certain specifications. But now the middle class, especially the middle class under 35, basically does not follow any classical principles in color relations. They can use it whenever they want. The traditional color principle naturally doesn't work here, but there is no chance to learn? It may be one reason, but criticizing our educational failure does not seem to explain the whole problem. The core reason is that they grew up in an anomie society. The existing norms can neither guide them how to deal with sudden changes every day, nor help them successfully locate their future. They have never enjoyed the benefits of norms, so they just do it casually. Anyway, public opinion is not interested in commenting on their aesthetic cultivation, nor can it come up with a systematic model to persuade them to do it.

In the future, the color of middle-class families will continue to be chaotic until this class loses its enthusiasm and creativity for change, and then the color will form a clear pattern in middle-class families, but it may take a long time.