II. Connotations of White in Chinese and English Culture

2.1 Connotations of White in Chinese Culture  

Chinese people have worshiped their deities all along and venerated all the livings. It involves the white and Chinese people have much admiration to it compared with Englishmen. In ancient times, it was generally acknowledged that white symbolized noble and unsullied features, brightness, simple but elegant, luminosity the like of the kind. We can learn some information from Chinese idoms. For instance, as clean as a whistle, jade white, impeccable moral integrity. As we all know, the white term word has a stronger sense of derogatory sence in the Chinese. Such as in ancient times, wars always happened in the autumn, leading to execute prisoners, reflecting feebleness and leaving pale and weak memories. From this matter, we could have a conclusion that the white embodied bloodless and lifeless traits. Besides, in Chinese culture, white color is the opposition of red color, as a taboo term, and it displayed the repudition and repulsion distinctions of Chinese people both materially and spiritually. For one thing, white is close to the economy and it seems to be rational and legitimate. Actually the fact is that legitimate income becomes a leader of the income from its main source in that it is more open and transparent. That is the prime reason why we call it legitimate income. For another, white marketing is fair and legal compared with black marketing. Then, we have a better understanding that white marketing is the rightful way for university students to dedicate themselves to inquiring academic thoughts. On the contrary, it is generally believed that white is backward and stubborn with a right way and specialized road. White has a sense of failure, including the soliders carrying a white flag to reveal the surrender. What's more, the white has the symbol of justice and brightness. Take Qu Yuan's poetry for instance. In his article, he noted: to regard the white as the black, and make the superior as the inferior. It is manifest that there is no clarification of what is right and what is wrong. The article purpose lies in exposure to the political atmosphere where he stayed in. And in many cases, the vast majority of signs will reflect white traits. Rambunctious nature, wicked and crafty malicious personalities, treacherous traits could often be seen in Peking opera tradition facebook . We could imagine a vivid picture that Yansong and Caocao were treacherous court officals dating back to the Qing and Ming Dynasty, and people often replace them with a white face. Simply put, there is a far cry about white, even the contradictory in the trditional Chinese culture. The white color preferences of the Chinese people are influenced by the five elements of metal, wood, water, fire and earth, in addition to geographical locations and weather. Therefore, we can see that white corresponds to golden color and the white has a symbol of lightness as the pure colors, showing the essence of cleaness and fulness. As Chinese sayings and proverbs go:“Spring Snow” is filled with elegant rhyme, rich and varied skills in the folklore, which is a popular trend in the trditional Chinese. Specifically, spring and snow came from Chu. In the spring and autumn period, We are familiar with the poetry: lime which was written by Yu Qian in MingDynasty. He said that he would like to leave purity to the world. The famous lines directly expressed his feelings and determined to become an innocent and pure person. There were ordinary people who had no fame and wore cloth gown in ancient times. The ancient literary men called themselves scholar-in white and other names. It implied the white contained lowliness. White can prove something in historical records written by Si Maqian, and it often described that people wore white clothes to see someone off. We can see this kind of scene in the famous novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. We could know that this kind of custom lasted today, then we can make a conclusion that sometimes the white means say goodbye to the world. In the days of the Revolution in 20 century, white boasted its many phrases such as white area, the white army, white bandits, white special road, white strongholds, white terror, white regime and so on. Most of the stereotyped expresssions about white phrases has some intentions about the cruel idea, and the reactionary.