Hidden Meanings in Chinese Art with Linda Lei

I hope all of you are having a great time so far my name is Linda Lee I am a docent here at the Asian Art Museum and what I want to talk about today are you've seen you went on tour you know you've seen a lot of our objects and you've you know painted you heard stories well you probably have noticed that Chinese art all have some kind of auspicious meaning behind them geez young to one right so what I want to do is talk about some of the ones you've seen and some of the ones you haven't seen since we have a very large museum and perhaps you can tell me later how can you apply that to your curriculum and first of all I would like to just show you some of the you know designs that you're very familiar with the kids love this right they see it as Nike and what does it represent well it represents fast probably victorious and they must recognize this correct well these logos the kids really recognize or all of us recognize without any written words so it's a visual representation and immediately recognized by the public and in this country as well as all over the world Chinese art is similars concept some of them can be recognized by majority of the population if you see this hanging on your doorway during Chinese New Year you probably know it probably means something lucky about it right even if you don't read Chinese or if you do read Chinese you know food Allah blessings have arrived but some other art something like this it may not be so easily recognizable by you know the general population in fact that's why we hidden meanings because the design has something hidden behind it to give you a lot of different meanings and it probably takes an educated person or a lead person of a society to interpret we will come back to this image but you are Chinese teachers and the Chinese language is just so wonderful it's so conducive to rebuses you know play on words homonyms and pictorial puns so what we will do today is that we will look at some of these hidden meanings behind some of the traditional art and then if you can introduce to your kids because kids when they are learning Chinese it's so much fun if they can have a little treasure hunt right to really discover and to decipher some of these hidden meanings and then make it relevant to their lives today our museum is really a treasure house for all of these activities so let's let me just show you what I mean on your tour you saw this piece of jade it was carved during the Neolithic era so what five six thousand years ago at the time there wasn't any written language so we don't know exactly what it meant and also you know a longer piece like this so they were found in the elite tomb so they were something very important much later in literature when we found in the historical books 2000 G they told us that the shapes are very important round represented the heavens and the square the earth so it's heaven and earth 10 U n B Fung so you also saw a little bit later this money tree during the Han Dynasty which about 2,000 years ago and what's hanging on them our han dynasty coins if you see the coins right they're very different from the rest or the other countries which has center round but we have a square in the center and round on the outside another ten you envy Fung or round and square representing heaven and earth and ever since we started a written language you first saw on the oracle bones that yahoo 1 and then you saw this wonderful piece of bronze which is one in the world the only one we are very proud to have this it's a little bit later in the shang dynasty and by then they have written words or inscribed words into the bronzes and you saw it in the belly a little bit you know it was probably hard to see but here it is when i show the inside to my students they always pick out one word who can tell me one word you can pick out the king wang probably right so what is the etymology of wang the king three horizontal strokes heaven humanity and the earth and a vertical stroke that connects all so the king was a conduit between the heaven and earth so that kind of gives you the same concept as that's home that jade of square and circle too and one of my students told me you know the king had a lot of power in those days i said what do you mean well look at one the word it has an axe on the bottom i thought that was very good observation you also you know the Peter and Bob told you about the Silk Road during especially during the Tang Dynasty about 7th to the 10th century there was a great deal of silk as well ceramics right that was coveted commodity but the subsequent dynasty the Song Dynasty from about 10th to about the 13th century or so that's when ceramic production was really I added Zenith and really beautiful pieces were made and they were making things that are very high fired such as this pillow it is very elegant because it really you know it's just white clay with a clear glaze on it and it has a lotus leaf on top with a little boy we think it's boy for holding underneath it has a lot of hidden meanings the curvature of a leaf fits directly right underneath the knee or that you're hit so if you sleep on a rolled you know or wave type of a pillow you know how important it is to have neck support and that's exactly what it is it actually can be kind of comfortable I know that's kind of hard to imagine but at least it will keep your hairdo intact so it was probably presented to a bride on her wedding night a wish to have lots of descendants especially sons now how do we know well the son or the child is kicking one foot up who can tell me which foot left well in Chinese we say left represents male right female nuns all new yoke right so I wish to continue to have sons what do you mean by continue because the word lien or that leaf is a lotus it sounds just like the other word lien so continues to have sons this is another pillow which has a very different purpose it was for funerary purpose and it has lots of symbolism on the designs well first of all it came from a kiln pseudo kiln which specialize in making this black and white you know plays and but when you have a black border surrounding it and then a light in the middle it actually for this purpose it's a transition between the yin and the yang okay from the living to the underworld and there is a deer in the middle how do you pronounce deer in chinese liu another word with the same pronunciation means high position in life like Fuu Lucia that Lou so again a play on words homonyms you know pictorial puns are used in all these hidden meanings so this deer has one leg up which one is that it's the right to lake in career the right represents the military the left represents the literary so the left would be one right will be woo so what is this mean whatever it says on this pillow or it's painted on this pillow it's not for the disease it's for the descendants of the deceased so there is a wish and there are five clouds coming around Chinese five is a very important number five means in this case five directions you know the four cardinal directions right don't I see Bay and then there's one in the middle so that makes a five direction so in this case riches are coming from five directions so what does this pillow tell you it's the wish of the disease to have their descendants to prosper as a high position military person so these two pillows one for the living and one for the dead but both really send you similar messages hopes and aspirations through future generations you've noticed that I use the traditional writing I know you teach simplified probably but when I was starting to prepare for this PowerPoint there's so few words actually are simplified in in this talk so that's why I've just remained it I mean kept it traditional but I'm sure it's very easily transcribed to the simplified but only a few words need to be done that way now we come to this wonderful piece of jade it is a bad Chinese love bats because when you say bat being foo right fool is another sound that sounds just like the blessings fool so we know has blessings right here but what are some other hidden meanings there is a symbol that looks like a swastika well this swastika symbol is not a german invention it's a very old Buddhist symbol coming from India so once it arrived in China the Chinese interpreted as being 10,000 won so one fool ah you know 10,000 blessings but there's one more there is a ribbon the bat is has a ribbon going through ribbon or a sash in Chinese is pronounced die die can be a sash or another word pronounced die means generations so I wish to have blessings continue for 10,000 generations oh here one I did change that one for a food Tron one that so that isn't that exciting if your students can decipher these little clues now this gourd this bottle has similar motifs it has red bats flying all over the sky and it also has a sash but it can be interpreted differently all the hidden meanings Chinese are really clever there are layers of different meanings so there could be more than one meaning to it and when you're teaching your classes depending on the age you sometimes can vary the meaning depending on their level of you know class what they can and understand well in this case read home pronounce another word that means vast is also home and flying in the sky which means home food she can may your blessing be as vast as the sky or still on the bats you often see five paths surrounding something we call it rule five blessings so what is rueful you hear a lot in Chinese you know really refer to a lot well traditionally the five blessings are health wealth longevity love of virtue and a peaceful death so those are the five blessings traditional blessings and I often ask my students what are your five blessings you will get a lot of different answers and you know it's what's important in one's life and it probably changes as they grow up as well so these are Jade carved panels you know Peter and Bob had probably told you Jade abrasion you know how to make the Jade into these designs is really a quite a technology and the five baths are surrounding one word that's show which means longevity so this design the meaning will be the five foo or five blessings surrounding longevity may you be granted longevity and five blessings how much do you want my goodness err you have everything and actually the lattice in the back it's also a swastika or a one kind of design now we come to this plate we call a birthday plate because it was probably given to a high official or even the Emperor of as a birthday gift it has a lot of peaches peaches always symbolize longevity for some reason and you when you go to a Chinese restaurant celebrate birthday you often eat those peach shaped buns right there are five peaches in the front and it continues in the back right there now I have to reverse it Karen I hope I know how to do this okay and the bats we know there are five because two of them are on the back so it really means may you possess both blessings and longevity actually the eight peaches the has a significance as well eight sometimes we will say ah eight kind of rhymes with far to prosper but in this case actually has another meaning because there are eight immortals guess what they do bestow longevity to people so in this case the age actually represents the eight immortals to give you longevity and five blessings so this is really a wonderful birthday gift now when you saw this at the very top bobbing p-probably showed you that's Queen Mother of the West in image now they told me this is funky it is okay the Queen Mother of the West what do what is their connection between Queen Mother of West and the peaches aha if you're teaching lower grades you probably have told a Monkey King story The Monkey King what you know one of the episodes he goes to King Queen mother of the west peach orchard and ate up all the peaches right now that's for the lower grades I see one teacher nodding her head so that's for the lower grades but this image is a Taoist image qui mother of the west who presides over paradise and also dispenses the elixir of immortality now that concept sometimes gets to be a little you know hocus-pocus for kids but if they know that the peaches are you know really in the Queen Mother West orchard perhaps they can make the connection because those peaches are those that orchard the trees bloom and fruit every 3,000 years in the story so 3,000 years is a really long time that makes it longevity another design or motif that you see quite often is the the head of this wand or a scepter it is originally started as a magical mushroom or fungus called ling Jie what did ling Jie do Wow Ranger cures a lot of ailment and it also gives you long life so this shape and a curls like this became as you wish we it is a Ruiz shape we not often use it on a lot of different mediums and we even use it on clothing you might have seen this on your passion on your way here because the collar and also that Center and it's also a Rui and you may have heard that is a eun-suh toe it's a cloud pattern yes we call that as well nowadays you see things do evolve over time but you can push it back to the origin was originally the ling Jie the magical from this then it became Rui as you wish and then sometimes now we call a cloud pattern because it resembles that cloud now this pillow when I showed you what your shape is it it is a Rui shape so it's wishing for something or another now I talked about fish you often see this especially around Chinese New Year right fish you need it a Chinese New Year or New Year's Eve and you save one for the next year because it symbolizes what it sounds like abundance have extra but in this case we have this beautiful jar from the Ming Dynasty it has fish goldfish swimming in a pond now goldfish pronounced GU also it sounds kind of like jean.you gold and jade now the pond is pronounced Y tongue right sure tongue and if you put it all together and use a different word just using you know play on these words so what do we get seeing you mind tongue right may your house be filled with riches so if you place this wonderful pot with all these auspicious things in your house that means you're going to have all this you probably have told the story about that little carp swims upstream jumps over the dragon's gate and finally turns into a dragon that that allegory comes up quite often because we always say if you work really hard you know overcome obstacles then you finally will get your goal or get to your goal and you became um you become a dragon and all of you have painted a dragon I hope that was fun for you and Susan told you dragon is a composite animal right you still remember some of it's a snout of a camel rabbit eyes big eyes and it has a body of a serpent with fish scales and tail and it has ears of a cow and horns of a stag and claws of an eagle so all these composite make a very strong animal so that's why all the Emperor's like that lone okay and also next year is the year of the Dragon and what does AI symbolize it symbolize diversity when you are putting all the positive aspects of all people together you make something very strong a nation is very strong if you have diversity and I often show this to my kids you know if you really work hard like all parents always tell their kids if you work hard and that dragon skate is what probably SAT or a college application once you get over that hurdle and you get into the College of your choice guess what you've made it you've turned into a dragon and in our collection we have a wonderful piece of jade you can see two fish on the bottom and the ah do you steal the fish and it turned the head into a wonderful dragon with all those features you tell Loman it doesn't have to be a carp it can be any fish right now we come to something really funny whenever I say a crab our kids kind of roll their eyes well actually that's a really nice gift to receive especially if you are a student so the crab has a shell the shell is an armor what do we say what do we call that armor in Chinese yeah and another meaning for that job means first you take first in examination so if you give somebody a crab before they take a test what does it say eg I mean may you take first place in the Imperial examination in the old days but now it can be any examination right so special meanings or hidden meanings sometimes also evolved so this is not the only meaning to that now I've talked about Jade ceramics you know bronzes now I'm coming to paper and silk calligraphy calligraphy is really the highest of Chinese the highest form of Chinese art and this particular fan the characters were written by wen Jong mean a very famous calligrapher and painter during the Ming Dynasty and fans for those of you have been to south of the Yangtze River Jiang nan psuedo Hangzhou areas in the summer you know what the heats like right well all the gentlemen living in that area used to carry a fan and they can decorate the fan with writing or they can paint it and they often exchange gifts exchanged fans as gifts so what does that really me of course there they're nice gifts but you see fans pronounce shun shuns and benevolence is but also pronounce shun so it's a reminder that you know to be benevolent and charitable as well so this is really a civilized slot I think that's wonderful now this painting if I show it to you know kids they look at it oh yeah Oh painting its darkened over age because it was painted on silk silk darkens and it has a whole bunch of flowers but what's so important about this one which actually is on view in our gallery painting gallery right now it is during the summer of 1690 for a famous painter a long way he gathered up some of his colleagues you know a couple of students but they gather together to make a composite painting and each one painted one plant or flower each plant or flower will have a meaning which could be a metaphor for their character and you've painted bamboo right bamboo at the bottom right there and what is bamboo me still remember Charlaine tells you it grows up right when the wind blows it bends over but it never breaks it comes back so it shows you what well strength yes and also very upright character and usually scholars like to compare themselves to bamboo and there's a link among of fungus right on the bottom as well and then we have a plum plum flower this is funky because it doesn't well anyway on the top it's a plum branch or tree well Chinese national flower is the plum flower right and or may want what does that represent well mayhaw actually grows even when the snow has not melted in on the ground in the very late winter just right before spring the flowers bloom so you know it overcomes adversity and and really ushers in the spring and because it has five petals and you know what that means one thing very nice about a composite painting is that's something you can do with your kids I've always you know asked all the students each bring something you know they like or that represents them into either a picture it can be a poem some kind of writing and each bring something positive and then what do they do they create a beautiful painting as a result so that's another project that could be very useful and what do we call it when scholars or educator people in the old days we always say scholars scholars but now everybody especially your school they're all educated so art they are the educated group when the educated people get together if your kids look at this painting they probably say oh yeah old cronies getting together which is true seven sages they're together in a bamboo grove but what do they do when they could get together they call this gathering of scholars yachty or elegant gathering and I always ask what do the kids do these days when they hang out together so you make it a lot of different answers coming from your students this presentation is really just the tip of the iceberg I've only mentioned very few motifs that have hidden meanings but in our museum we have world-class Chinese art about fifty percent of the collection is Chinese and I think it's wonderful if you can use us as resources even though these are traditional paintings you can use them as inspiration and then come with something new you know what are the new projects can come out of the inspiration next time you come I hope you can give me some new projects this particular image is my wish for all of you all the staff and teachers at case what does that mean all you should know this one okay a sailboat Aoife and function which literally mean made the wind be around your back but you can say it may you'll be successful in all your endeavors or just have a great school year

Channel: Asian Art Museum

Views: 43,571

Keywords: chinese art, asian art museum, rebuses, visual puns china

Id: DbK6uw6aL-o

Length: 31min 58sec (1918 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 24 2011