What are the five elements in Chinese culture? How is it defined?

The five elements are wood, fire, earth, gold and water. The first is that the nature of the universe is made up of five elements that are born from each other. With the rise and fall of these five elements, the universe and nature change, not only affecting the fate of human beings, but also making everything in the universe cycle. The Five Elements theory holds that everything in the universe is composed of the movement and change of the five basic characteristics: wood, fire, earth, gold and water. It emphasizes the concept of wholeness and depicts the structural relationships and forms of movement of things.

Secondly, the concept of the five colors established by the five elements theory is closely related to it. Though the Chinese theory of the five elements was compiled and popularized during the Warring States period, the five colors had become revered colors long before the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties. From the perspective of color science, the five colors appeared as early as three generations ago. From the Western Zhou to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the five colors had become widely circulated aesthetic standards. The philosophical thought of Yin-Yang and Five Elements was an official philosophy and conceptual system during the feudal society of China for more than 2,000 years, and it was used exclusively by successive kings to safeguard the rule of the feudal dynasty. And the ancient Chinese color science, profound and complicated, great learning.

Again the five elements are born phase suppression are laws, like the yin and yang of the Tai Chi, the five elements of the characteristics of each other. The five elements are gold, wood, water, fire and earth. Among them, gold grasps wood, wood grasps earth, earth grasps water, water grasps fire, and fire grasps gold. Gold begets water, water begets wood, wood begets fire, fire begets earth, and earth begets gold. Gold is metal. Wood is forest, earth is earth, water feeds all things, fire burns all things. Gold begets water, and gold means water, so the five elements change with each other.

Also the philosophical concepts of yin and yang and the five elements are profound and all-encompassing, covering many areas of society and culture, including the arts. The expression of symbolic colors in the theory of yin and yang and the five elements shows the special thinking ability of our forefathers to control colors and coordinate with the outside world, and lays the foundation for the formation of the concept of colored colors in China. The Chinese nation and its aesthetic mode of establishment. 2000 years, although various schools of thought have different interpretations of it, but still followed as the experience of the ancients.