The colourful Chinese
First of all, let me caution you that I'm no geomancer
(feng shui expert). Honest
black
ink and 
paper are my trade, rather than daubing from rainbow-hued palettes.
Besides, I'm an overseas Chinese in extensively industrialised Singapore,
not mainland China! What I'm offering is just my impression
of how traditional Chinese culture views the colours that
light up our lives.
Let me start with a few examples. The colours of my mum's
pre-school are
green and
red. My convent secondary school favoured
deep blue
and
gold.
My junior college wore battle-paint of
green,
black and
;
but as far as I can tell, the university
I'm heading for in a month's time goes for
blue
and .
(Blue's
my favourite colour too!)
What do you think? I'll take a guess —
the pre-school
is for kids to romp around;
the convent
is demure and saintly;
my junior college
is spoiling for a fight; and my university
is somewhat conservative. Colours speak a silent language
of their own, to others in the know. It doesn't differ that much
in essence from culture to culture, but the emphasis varies in
the most subtle ways.
Take mum's pre-school. Red
and green
are Christmas colours, aren't they? In Chinese idiom, to be
dressed in "much red much green" means
to be most splendidly attired. See, the Chinese aren't
so very mystically different!
Green's
not really unlucky. In fact,
lü
(bright green), the colour of new leaves, is a good colour.
Qing
(darker green) isn't bad in itself; if you look at my signature
alongside, it's the second character of my name (I'm a horse,
so I was named for plenty of grass to eat!). There are only
two things you can say against green. At traditional funerals,
great-grandchildren wear something very, very light green
to signify mourning. And the Chinese idiom
for a cuckold (a man whose wife is unfaithful to him) describes
him as "wearing a green cap"!
And from here we plunge into the other colours of mourning.
It'll be no surprise to you that
black is bad.
You might not have realised just how unlucky it is, though.
Traditionally, you would never wear black to a wedding;
it's reserved for funerals. At traditional Chinese funerals,
immediate relatives wear a very plain shirt-and-trousers in
particular colours. For your parents (or in the case of
married women, for your in-laws), you'd wear either
black cotton
or straw. For your wife's parents, or your own parents if
you've married out already, you wear raw, unbleached cotton —
the thought of a
wedding gown would have horrified my ancestors!
And grandchildren wear blue.
The predominance of all shades of blue in my wardrobe wouldn't have
pleased my great-grandparents particularly, either.
Of course, attitudes have changed now, especially in my country,
Singapore. Some young people wore chic
black
at my cousin's wedding, recently, and not an eyebrow was twitched.
Although it was a traditional wedding, not a Christian one,
the bride was resplendent in
lace.
But my mother and every one of my aunts ushered guests in blinding
scarlet cheong sams
(figure-enhancing Chinese gowns), and no one's abandoning red
as a New Year mascot. So attire yourself in red for your
next wedding, and the older generation will love you!
