The "Red" Finery System in the Sui and Tang Dynasties

DOI

10.2991/icemaess-17.2017.121How to use a DOI?

Keywords

red; the Sui and Tang Dynasties; finery system

Abstract

Chen Yinke holds that though the Sui Dynasty only lasted several decades in China's history, most of its laws and regulations were inherited by the Tang Dynasty without much change, so the two dynasties can be regarded as one. The greatest significance of the Sui and Tang Dynasties for China at that time was nothing more than the reconstruction of a unified concept of the country nearly 300 years after Qin and Han Dynasties in a state of disintegration. In that situation, the color system, as one of the major systems, showed a very special aspect. Changes took place in the Sui Dynasty on red, always acting as the vital one among the five colors corresponding to the five elements (metal, wood, water, fire and earth). The Wu De Shi Zhong Theory was slowly watered down. Meanwhile, with the prevalence of Buddhist culture, the combination of foreign and Chinese color concepts greatly manifested the color in Chinese social life. The input of color and technology from the West, to some extent, changed the composition of Chinese color as well as the external color and its style, which in some cases may even become popular elements, with secondary colour used by the ruling class in a large amount. However, red maintained its important position at that time because of its orthodox position in China. This paper mainly focuses on the changes of red in the history of the finery system via the research on costume colors in the Sui and Tang Dynasties.

Copyright

© 2017, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Qing Lang
PY  - 2017/12
DA  - 2017/12
TI  - The "Red" Finery System in the Sui and Tang Dynasties
BT  - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Education, Management, Arts, Economics and Social Science (ICEMAESS 2017)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 551
EP  - 557
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icemaess-17.2017.121
DO  - 10.2991/icemaess-17.2017.121
ID  - Lang2017/12
ER  -