Chinese Red - Temple Vermillion

The moment you take even a step into the Sino-Asiatic world - any part of east Asia with a significant Chinese population or under Chinese influence, or else into your nearest Chinatown - you enter a world coloured with red. It is very conspicuous. The Chinese adore the colour red. It features in all of their adornments, both domestic and public. But it is not just any colour red - it is a very particular type of red. Not fire engine red. Not Santa Claus red. Not Red Cross red. Not communist red, either. No. It is Chinese lantern red. Chinese temple red. It is a particular, unmistakeable shade of red usually identified as "vermillion" or else, in the past, as "cinnabar". See the colour square above for an example. 

There is no official definition of the exact shade but in the sample given above "vermillion" has the Hex value #E34234. Any shade of red near to it will pass as "Chinese red" as we will call it here. You will find it used in a thousand different ways. Red lanterns. Red ribbons. Red signs. Red seals. The present author has recently arrived in the Chinese section of George Town on the Prince of Wales Island and this "Chinese red" is on display everywhere. He recently ate at the "Red Garden Food Paradise" which is literally "Chinese red" from top to bottom - red tables, red chairs, red writing, red uniforms on the waiting staff. Everything in this distinctive "Chinese red". 

The standard explanation for the love of this colour among the Chinese is entirely unsatisfactory. We are told, unhelpfully, that the Chinese regard it as "auspicious" and that it brings "good luck." More detailed explanations are equally uninformative. We are told that it "symbolises fire" and this "represents spring" and the "direction south" and is therefore "lucky" or "auspicious" for this reason. Certainly, the Chinese are given to preoccupations of "luck", but surely something more lies behind the ubiqitous use of red, and this particular red. How do we explain that this red - this "vermillion" - is regarded as "auspicious", and also why it is so completely and comprehensively "auspicious" that the Chinese use it so extensively in all contexts great and small? What is it about this red, this particular red, that renders it so important to the Chinese? In the pictures below we see some examples of its many uses:

Tradition lacquerware

Temple entrance with lanterns 

Row of lanterns

Traditional seal (or "chop")

Chinese wedding 

Calligraphy

* * * 

The present author offers the following explanation for this characteristically Chinese phenomenon. It is not difficult to piece together the symbolism of this colour in the Chinese tradition:

Until the development of synthetic alternatives, this particular shade of red was traditionally prepared from 'cinnabar', which is to say from Mercury Sulphide (HgS). Cinnabar is a sulphide of mercury that, when ground into a powder, yields a strong, stable permanent red that can be used in paints and lacquers. Good, stable red colourings are relatively rare in nature, so this preparation - a by-product of mining and metallurgy - was especially valued. 

It was not exclusive to the Chinese, though. Cinnabar (the name comes from Greek but is probably Persian in origin) was known and used in other cultures as well.  We see it used as a red ink in medieval European manuscripts, for example, and as a paint used in the murals of Roman Pompei: 

But the Chinese adopted it as their own. The reason for this is that the Chinese tradition - and especially Taoism - is essentially alchemical and cinnabar, as a metallic essence, is a key ingredient in Taoist alchemy. In the Occident alchemy is, and has always been, a peripheral or 'fringe' tradition. In the Chinese spiritual order it is far more central and mainstream. The colour symbolism of 'Chinese red' and its associations with 'good luck' have a basis in and are to be explained by the significance of cinnabar in Chinese alchemy. 

The primary alchemical significance of cinnabar is this: during the mining of gold the miners might encounter 'veins' of red cinnabar (Mercury sulphide)in the bedrock. Gold and cinnabar are often found together. This is because both gold and mercury are heavy metals and such metals tend to be found in the same geological strata. (For the same reason, arsenic and other heavy metals are often found with gold.) 

Thus cinnabar is associated with gold and in the alchemical mythology of gold mining is often called 'Dragon's blood'. Dragons are believed to store and protect gold in their 'lairs' in the womb of the earth. When miners encounter 'veins' of blood-red pigments running through rocks near and around gold deposits they imagine them to be veins of Dragon's blood. This idea is suggested by the word 'vermillion' too, since it comes from the same root as the word 'worm', and a dragon is a 'worm' in many languages. 'Vermillion' means 'the colour of the dragon/worm'. 

The basic idea here is simple and straightforward. Vermillion - dragon's blood - is "lucky" because it signifies the proximity of gold. When a miner encounters cinnabar (dragon's blood) he is in luck, because he knows there is likely to be gold nearby. When he strikes dragon's blood he has struck gold. 

By extension, this colour is associated with gold and with the auric properties of gold in a general sense. Gold here carries its alchemical significance. It is not merely a precious metal valued in terms of wealth; it also signifies spiritual perfection. Accordingly, the Chinese surround themselves with things the colour of 'dragon's blood' because it points to the perfections of gold. Indeed, as we see in the case of the calligraphy illustrated above, we often find the colour gold with 'Chinese red'. Cinnabar/vermillion/dragon's blood goes with gold in Chinese colour symbolism. You can walk into any Chinese temple and see instances of this. 

By understanding these alchemical associations, and by appreciating the inherently alchemical character of the Chinese tradition, we are in a position to appreciate why this particular colour red is so highly regarded by the Chinese. To a large extent, of course, the traditional connections may be forgotten, and so people will merely regard 'Chinese red' as "lucky" in a superstitious way, but the reasons behind the superstition can still be discerned and understood. In effect, the colour signifies gold, as well as all the things that gold itself signifies, especially the spiritual perfection of the 'Golden Race' and such other parallels. It is remarkable that this metallurgic symbolism has persisted and become so pervasive in the Chinese order. Understanding the symbolism of 'Chinese red' is one of the keys to the entire Chinese tradition. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Tile Patterns of George Town

George Town, on the Prince of Wales Island - or Pe Nang as the Malays call it (which means Land of the Betel Nut) - is possibly the best preserved of any colonial city. A defined area, extending outwards from the Chinese jetties, is a listed heritage zone and consists of superb colonial administrative buildings and extensive rows of terrace houses or what the locals call 'link' houses. Some are very old and many are very well preserved. In amongst them, in addition to these architectural riches, are many splendid Chinese clan temples some of which go back many centuries. As elsewhere, the Chinese and numerous other trading communities prospered here under the comparatively benevelent, tolerant and civilly constructive rule of the British. 

A terrace or 'link' house in the back streets of George Town. 

A striking feature of George Town architecture is the tiled floors, walls and pathways found throughout. This current post is a photographic essay illustrating samples of these distinctive tiles. In many instances, the floors have been redone in the 1920s, and it is largely from that era that these designs come, although some are considerably older. As readers can see, the designs are typically geometrical with those based upon the octagon predominating. Other patterns, less common, are floral. Please click on any image to see a large version. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Marie Euphrosyne Spartali Stillman

The photograph above is of the classically beautiful young Marie Euphrosyne Spartali posing as the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, and was taken by Julia Margaret Cameron in the 1860s. Mrs Cameron was much maligned as a photographer in her day. To contemporary tastes her photography was sloppy and uneven, insufficiently formal, but she found admirers among the Pre-Raphaelites, and it was among that nascent artistic circle that she associated at Little Holland House in Kensington; it was in the salon there that this photograph and others with Miss Spatali as model was taken. Here is another:

Mrs Cameron was born in Calcutta, and Little Holland House was leased by Henry Thoby Prinseps of the artistic Prinsep family, directors of the East India Company. This current blog featured an earlier post on the superb draughtsmanship of James Prinsep, once resident in the sacred city of Benares. (See here.) In this present post we begin by underlining the connection of the Prinseps to the Pre-Raphaelite movement. British India both attracted and gave birth to highly creative and intelligent men and women. Mrs Cameron, hosted by Mr Prinsep at Little Holland House, was among them. The influence of the east via these connections - an orientalist influence, that is to say - was part of the Pre-Raphaelite heritage from the outset. This is sometimes not fully appreciated.

Little Holland House, one of the places where the early circle of the Pre-Rephaelite Brotherhood met. It was demolished after the lease contracted by Mr Prinsep expired. 

In any case, Marie Euphrosyne Spartali, of wealthy Greek Orthodox background, was introduced to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, its circle and its ideals, through the photography sessions with Mrs Cameron, the exact connection being that Mrs Cameron owned a house next to the Spartali family's vineyard on the Isle of Wight. She took this Miss Spartali to Kensington and introduced her to such figures as Dante Gabriel Rosetti and George Frederic Watts. Smitten with Miss Spartali's Hellenic beauty, these artists eagerly adopted her as a model. She features in many famous works in the Pre-Raphaelite canon. Here she is, for instance, in a work by Rosetti, A Vision of Fiammetta (1878) :

At length, however, she married an older gentleman, also part of the same circle, an American art critic named William James Stillman. The marriage was against her family's wishes, and proved to be difficult, but it furthered her connections to the world of artists and provoked her to seek training in drawing and painting. She was particularly taken by the work of Mr Rosetti and approached him to be her teacher. Rosetti, too busy, declined but recommended she approach Ford Maddox Brown. This she did - once more through the salon at the Prinsep's Little Holland House - and she began her own artistic career. She trained under Mr Brown's tutelage for some ten years. 

This is all by way of introducing her here as one of the present author's favourite Pre-Raphaelites. There are many "lost" Pre-Raphaelites, and it is fashionable these days to lament their neglect - especially the neglect of the females. In the case of the work of Mrs Spartali Stillman the neglect is particularly lamentable, because she was a very fine artist who received scant recognition in her own time or since. When she died she noted in her Will that it seemed odd to make a Will when she had nothing of worth to bequeath. In fact, she left a canon of extremely fine paintings in the Ruskinesque Pre-Raphaelite quasi-Quattrocento style; literary subjects, often neo-medievalist, characterized by complex rather than formulaic compositions, an intensity of colour - as opposed to the gloomy browns of academic painting - and a loving attention to pattern, texture and detail. 

Here is one of her most 'orientalist' works, Woman with Lute. We see the unmistakeable Pre-Raphaelite style adapted to a distinctly orientalist purpose. 

A great many of Mrs Spartali Stillman's work are depictions of single female figures in wistful poses, highly reminiscent of Mr Rosetti's work. Here is a typical example, more medieval Christian and less orientalist in tenor, Cloister Lilies:

 

Possibly her best painting in this genre is the delightful Madonna Pietra degli Scrovigni, from 1884, see below. There is a sense of the mystical in this work, the Madonna clutching a dark crystal ball. Like much of Mrs Spartali Stillman's oeuvre it is done in watercolor and gouache on paper, but with heavy, opaque applications of colour that makes it seem like an oil painting, a method promoted by Edward Burne-Jones and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle. It is a method that Mrs Spartali Stillman perfected. 

But it is in larger paintings set in landscapes that we see more of her unique talent. It is in these paintings that she stands apart. For example, see one of her very best paintings, the dramatic, bleak isolation of Antigone, below:

Another beautiful painting captures a scene from Boccaccio's Decameron. From 1889 it is entitled, The Enchanted Garden, or more fully, The Enchanted Garden of Messer Ansaldo, or, more fully still, Messer Ansaldo showing Madonna Dionara his Enchanted Garden. Messer Ansaldo falls in love with Madonna Dionara, a faithfully married woman. In an attempt to woo her - deploying sorcery - he makes his winter garden blossom like spring (though, gallantly, does not dishonour her in the end.) It is likely that Mrs Spartali Stillman's painting was the inspiration for the more famous Enchanted Garden of Mr John Waterhouse from 1916. Mrs Spartali Stillman's work is here below:

Several very charming paintings of a distinctly neo-medievalist tone, all of them set on the grounds of Kelmscott Manor, the home of Mr William and Mrs Jane Morris - another artistic centre like Little Holland House - are among this writer's personal favorites and demonstrate the best aspects of Mrs Spartali Stillman's talent. Morris, and Rosetti and the Pre-Raphaelites, took inspiration from the gothic manor and its organic surrounds. Mrs Spartali Stillman did as well. Her paintings of the manor and its grounds are especially attractive, although they deviate from many of the Pre-Raphaelite norms. They are not literary, for example, or based upon Renaissance models. They are more folkish, more naif. The artist is more herself and less an admirer of Rosetti in these works. Here are four such paintings, all of them splendid:

Kelmscott Manor: Feeding Doves in Kitchen Yard

The Long Walk at Kelmscott Manor

A Lady in the Garden, Kelmscott Manor

From the Field, Kelmscott Manor

In her later career, Mrs Spartali Stillman moved to Italy where her husband was working. There she turned to Tuscan landscapes and other Italian themes, building upon the Quattrocento themes of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. To this writer's tastes, though, her Tuscan work is not so enchanting, although much of it remains in private collections and is rarely available for public display. This, rather than some Victorian conspiracy against female artists, is largely what accounts for the on-going neglect of her work. Unfortunately, almost all discussion of her art is today part of the tiresome oppressed-woman-artist narrative typical of our times. There is much more of interest in her work than what can be seen through the filter of her gender. Quite apart from such contemporary preoccupations, she is a deserving artist with a distinct character who used the Pre-Raphaelite style as a medium for her own unique viewpoint. Readers can be assured that she is not featured here because she is a woman, but because she is good. 


Yours,


Harper McAlpine Black

The Difference Confucius Makes

The previous posting to this blog concerned the significant differences between the Indo-Vedic civilization on the one hand – which is to say the greater Indian sub-continent and thereabouts - and the Sino-Asiatic on the other – which is to say Southern and North-Eastern Asia. Various points of contrasts were noted – such as the Hindoo world giving way to the Boodhist – with a different relation to salt in the cuisine, and a different salt regime in general, being given as a crucial one. Readers can see the post, Salt and Civilisation, here.

The specific reason for noting the contrasts is that the present author has, in the past few weeks, traversed from one civilization to the other, crossing the invisible line that divides the two. After six months travelling around the sub-continent, most recently along the Malabar coast, he has now made it as far east as the Prince of Wales Island (or what the Malays call ‘Pe Nang’, the so-called ‘Pearl of the Orient’) to take up temporary residence in the elegant historic city of George Town. The contrasts between India and South-East Asia are marked, obvious and everywhere. As he adjusts to the relocation, more and more contrasts present themselves. There are still swastikas on the temples and the Musselmens still give the call to prayer five times a day, along with many other points of continuity with Hindoostan – indeed, there are plenty of Dravidians about and George Town includes an entire area popularly called Little India – so there is a definite sense of being in the same Asia as before, generally speaking. But the distinctions are more profound than the continuities. It is a different spiritual atmosphere, a different construction of traditions, a different culture. What exactly defines these differences? What factors are the most decisive?

One psycho-spiritual difference is immediately apparent: when one enters the Chinese or Chinese-influenced world one enters a new encounter with “luck”. The Hindoo, and even more the Mahometan, can be perfectly fatalistic and will indulge in prayers and amulets to confer good fortune and to attract blessings, but this is quite different to the Chinese preoccupation with “luck”. The Chinaman lives in a web of “luck”, which often manifests as a proclivity to gambling. The present writer saw no instances of gambling anywhere in India. No doubt it exists, but it is not a feature of Indian culture. It is, however, of the Chinese. And, as anywhere, it is unhealthy. “Luck” is surely a trivialization, a degeneration, of the ancient Chinese spirit, a symptom of metaphysical decline. In many respects the Chinese are not nearly as ‘religious’ as the Indians – depending, of course, on what we mean by ‘religious’ – but they are more directly ‘superstitious’ in a profane sense. It is the difference between being “blessed” and being “lucky”. The religious man still seeks blessedness (and whatever than entails) whereas “luck” is a desacralized and profane version of blessedness and is focused upon worldly things. In George Town one can see Chinese lighting incense sticks in temples to assist the outcome of a horse race. Indian superstition is rarely so crude. 

There are, all the same, ways in which the Sino-Asiatic culture is more refined and developed than the Indian. The present writer must relate that, to a great degree, it comes as a relief to be out of an Indian milieu and to be settled in the far more orderly – and clean – realm of the Chinese. A different social order prevails, a different sense of the civic. This is not merely sociological. It goes much deeper.

A friend of the writer, who was himself widely travelled and well acquainted with these distinct worlds, long ago made the remark that, in his opinion, the most fundamental difference between the Indians and the Asians – the Hindoostanis and the Sino-Asiatics – can be put down to one word, one name: Confucius. “Asia has Confucius,” he said, “Whereas India does not.” The two worlds have, as already noted, the Boodha in common, although the Asians embraced him and his fellow Indians did not (or not finally). And Taoism, indigenous to China, is pervasive in its influence in the Chinese world but has never made a mark in the Indian. But, more to the point, - more important even than Lao Tse - China had a Confucius and India had no equivalent.

Chinese culture and religious tradition is often stylized as an amalgam of three main streams: Boodhism, Taoism and Confucianism. Of these three, the latter is the one most often neglected by outsiders and especially by Western observers because it hardly seems like a “religion” at all, and yet it is the tradition that has made the deepest impression upon the Chinese and upon their wider world. Every aspect of Chinese life – the whole of Chinese civilization - is coloured by Confucius and the greater Confucian tradition, and this influence extends on every level throughout the entire sphere of historical and cultural Chinese influence, throughout the whole of South-east Asia as well as Korea and Japan in the north. Confucius and Confusianism, more than any other single factor, has created the very fabric of Sino-Asiatic life.

This is evident in many ways, but primarily in what we might term an elevated notion of ‘civic virtue’. These pages are not the place to explain the manner in which Confucianism operates as a religion and not merely as a philosophy in the lesser sense - it is certainly much more than merely a code of social behaviour. It has much deeper roots in the Asiatic soul. But in practical terms, and for our present purposes, its effect is to inculcate civic virtues. This is conspicuously lacking in the Indian. The Indian order promotes many profound virtues, of course, especially those pertaining to family and to caste, and yet there is a remarkable lack of civic virtues. This becomes all too evident once one has a different social order, such as the Chinese, with which to compare. One wonders why the Indian does not seem to have the slightest degree of civic pride? His virtues are private, and based in family and caste affinities, yet are conspicuously lacking at the civic level. It is a problem with which governments in India must contend all the time – to no great effect. The modern Indian has a newly concocted sense of nationalism, certainly, but that is a different thing again. There is, aside from that, a very definite lack of civic consciousness and civic obligation, virtues which are deeply ingrained in Chinese culture by contrast.

This aspect of Indo-Vedic civilization is on display at every point in the civic environment in every part of the sub-continent. As any traveler can relate, the dirtiness of the Indian civic environment is truly something to behold. The Indian, as many travelers have long remarked, is very clean in his personal habits, and also in his home, but that is where it ends. He feels no obligation to keep the streets clean. Nor does he feel any obligation to respect the beauty of Mother India more generally. This writer heard a story related of a traveler on an Indian train who was chided for putting a plastic wrapper in a rubbish bin. “No, no,” he was told, “you throw it out the window.” He resisted this, but after a while a bin attendant arrived and duly emptied the entire rubbish bin out the door of the moving train. It was suddenly apparent that the traveler had been chided for making the bin attendant’s job more difficult. 

It is such things that make India so incomprehensible to outsiders. Indians are punctilious about purity but think nothing about spitting in public places. This is to say nothing about defecating! Poor Mother India, in truth, is the biggest urinal in the world. The present writer was shocked and horrified to arrive in Cochin – assuredly a beautiful location – only to find the entire foreshore literally ankle deep in rubbish. Most remarkable is the fact that no one seems to notice. Indian families sit on the sandy beaches conducting picnics in amongst the junk and years of accumulated plastic bags. No one makes the slightest effort to clean up the mess. Without doubt the most appalling abuse to be seen is in Boodha Gaya where Indians have been throwing empty drink bottles into the compound housing the Bodhi tree and the Diamond Throne of the Boodha. India is very raw.

Once one enters a world under Chinese influence, however, there is a marked difference. A sense of civic virtue prevails. George Town is spotless. The streets are pristine. The same sense continues throughout all those parts under Chinese influence, the entire Sino-Asiatic realm. Once, in Japan, this writer and his fellow travelers noted an item of rubbish screwed up and shoved into a hedge. It was the only item of rubbish to be seen in the entire city. Someone quipped, though, that the miscreant responsible would probably spend sleepless nights about it and would eventually go back, throw the rubbish in the bin, and might possibly turn himself into the police in shame. This is the mark of Confucius. Such is the hold that Confucius has upon the Asiatic soul. 

It is very noticeable. Why is India the way she is? Why are the profound spiritual traditions of India accompanied by civic chaos? The answer is that India never had a Confucius. In many respects Sino-Asiatic spirituality is not as lofty, not as transcendent, as the Indo-Vedic, but it is consequently more grounded, more concerned with civic realities. This is exactly the nature of Confucianism. We may have difficulty appreciating the ways in which it constitutes a ‘religion’, but such is the very nature of Asian religiosity, certainly as it was shaped by Confucianism. This holds in check the otherworldliness of Boodhism and the emphasis upon nature that characterizes Taoism. India never had such a moderating influence to bridge heaven and earth. 

Confucianism, of course, is far more than merely a deeply rooted civic code. It was among the so-called Neo-Confucian sages such as Zhu Xi and his followers that China found a parallel to the metaphysics of Plato. Westerners are often drawn to Taoism, but it is actually certain schools of Confucianism that are nearest to the occidental temperament. This might be the subject of a later post. 

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black