Meaning Of Qing In Chinese Culture
There are five basic colour terms in Chinese culture: bai 白 (white), huang 黄 (yellow), chi 赤 (red), qing 青 (cyan), and hei 黑 (black). Among these, qing causes the most confusion for non-native Chinese speakers for its vagueness and complexity. It is often translated to cyan in English, due to the belief that every colour term in any language can be translated to a “phenomenologically basic” English colour term (Berlin & Kay, 1969). However, such an arbitrary attempt to fit a Chinese colour term to the English palette not only fails to fully capture the meanings of the word, but also deprives it of its rich culture connotations.
Many scholars have thus tried to devise a better way to explain qing to English speakers. Xing (2008) contends that
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This gives rise to a conceptual question: why qing still exists if it can be simply replaced with more commonly used and easily understandable colour terms?
The objective of this study is to address the above question by comparing qing and green, and qing and blue. This study will start by comparing the original meanings of qing, green and blue, from their occurrences in traditional Chinese literature such as 诗经. It will also examine the meanings of these three terms in common expressions and phrases, in order to detect the subtle differences between them. By scrutinizing the usage and evolution of the meanings of the three terms, the study aims to reach a conclusion on whether qing is a colour term or an abstract concept.
The main source of data will be Chinese Language Corpus by State Language Commission of China, which includes all major Chinese literature from Zhou Dynasty (3000 BC). In particular, literature from three eras will be extensively and carefully analysed. The first era is from Zhou Dynasty to Han Dynasty, when the three terms developed their original meanings. The second era is Tang Dynasty, when the meanings of the three terms almost completely overlapped. The last era is from Ming Dynasty to now, when green and blue have become the basic colours in Chinese, while qing have lost its popularity and
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