{"id":1995,"date":"2026-05-24T10:37:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T02:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zhangruying.com\/en\/?p=1995"},"modified":"2026-05-24T10:40:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T02:40:16","slug":"qing-%e9%9d%92-chinese-color-that-cannot-be-translated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zhangruying.com\/en\/1995","title":{"rendered":"Qing (\u9752): Chinese Color That Cannot Be Translated"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Zhang<\/a><\/p>\n

Did you know that English doesn\u2019t have a word for \u201cQing (\u9752 ; q\u012bng)\u201d color? There is no English word that can precisely translate this color.<\/p>\n

\"Zhang<\/a>
Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests at the Temple of Heaven, Photo source: Baike Baidu<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But in China, Qing can be the glazed Qing color of the roof of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests at the Temple of Heaven, the sky-blue color of Ru ware, the mineral blue-green shade of the mountains in\u300a\u5343\u91cc\u6c5f\u5c71\u56fe\u300b(Qi\u0101nl\u01d0 ji\u0101ngsh\u0101n t\u00fa), or the strand of Qingsi (\u9752\u4e1d ; q\u012bng s\u012b) color when ancient people\u2019s hair first began to darken.<\/p>\n

\"Zhang<\/a>
\u300a\u5343\u91cc\u6c5f\u5c71\u56fe\u300b\u5c40\u90e8<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In traditional Chinese culture, the meaning of \u201cQing\u201d is very broad; in ancient times, it could encompass colors such as blue, green, and black, for example, \u201c\u9752\u5929\u201d (q\u012bng ti\u0101n, blue sky), \u201c\u9752\u8349\u201d (q\u012bng c\u01ceo, green grass), and \u201c\u9752\u4e1d\u201d (q\u012bng s\u012b, black hair). The color Qing was classified by Confucianism as one of the \u201cfive primary colors\u201d, symbolizing the east, spring, and the virtue of \u201cRen\u201d (\u4ec1 ; r\u00e9n), and carries profound cultural significance. It was widely used in Qing porcelain, blue-and-white porcelain, blue-green landscape painting, and traditional clothing.<\/p>\n

Qing is a color in the visible light spectrum between green and blue, somewhat resembling the color of the sky. Modern color science defines Qing as a type of greenish blue with medium brightness and high saturation, specifically referring to one of the three complementary colors. In color printing and photography, Qing (Cyan) is one of the primary colors, a dark greenish-blue color.<\/p>\n

\"Zhang<\/a>
Photo source: Baidu @\u751f\u6d3b\u653e\u6620\u5385<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Qing is the color of spring, and in traditional Chinese culture, it is regarded as the \u201ccolor of all living things\u201d. During the pre-Qin period, Qing was classified by Confucianism as one of the five primary colors (Qing, red, yellow, white, black), and was also given the symbolic meaning of \u201cRen\u201d.<\/p>\n

The term \u201cQingyi” (\u9752\u8863 ; q\u012bng y\u012b) first appeared during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, referring to the clothing worn by the emperor in spring (\u300a\u793c\u8bb0\u00b7\u6708\u4ee4\u300bL\u01d0 j\u00ec \u00b7 yu\u00e8 l\u00ecng). However, since the Eastern Han dynasty, Qingyi gradually came to refer to people of lower social status. During the Wei and Jin periods, the court stipulated that common people could wear green, Qing, and white. In the official clothing system, the Northern Zhou introduced \u201crank-color clothing\u201d, while the Sui dynasty selected red and Qing as official colors for court attire. After the Sui dynasty, the order of official clothing colors was basically fixed as purple, crimson, Qing, and green, with Qing becoming the color for lower-ranking officials. This pattern continued until the Qing dynasty, when the Qing surpassed other colors and officially became the color of all official clothing.<\/p>\n

\"Zhang<\/a>
Photo source: Baike Baidu<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The production and use of Qing porcelain during the Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties marked the first peak of Qing porcelain art in Chinese history. Influenced by the metaphysical thought of the time, an aesthetic tendency of \u201cQing, elegant, spiritual, and refined\u201d was formed. After the Ming dynasty, Taoism stipulated that Taoist priests\u2019 daily clothing should be Qing in color, leading to the term \u201cQing-robed Taoist priest\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cQingsi” (\u9752\u4e1d ; q\u012bng s\u012b) originally referred to Qing-colored silk threads or ropes (as in \u300a\u4e50\u5e9c\u8bd7\u96c6\u00b7\u964c\u4e0a\u6851\u300bYu\u00e8f\u01d4 sh\u012bj\u00ed \u00b7 m\u00f2 sh\u00e0ng s\u0101ng). It was not until the Tang dynasty, through Li Bai\u2019s poetic line \u201c\u671d\u5982\u9752\u4e1d\u66ae\u6210\u96ea\u201d (Hair black as silk in the morning, turned to snow by nightfall), that the term became commonly used to refer to black hair. \u201cQingjin” (\u9752\u887f ; q\u012bng j\u012bn) (from \u300a\u8bd7\u7ecf\u300b (sh\u012b j\u012bng) \u201c\u9752\u9752\u5b50\u887f\u201d (The blue-green collar of the scholar.)) and \u201cQingshan” (\u9752\u886b ; q\u012bng sh\u0101n) gradually became terms referring to ancient scholars or officials unsuccessful in their careers. The transformation of the cultural meaning of Qing itself is part of the history of changes within Chinese culture.<\/p>\n

\"Zhang<\/a>
\u300a\u5343\u91cc\u6c5f\u5c71\u56fe\u300b<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In painting, blue-green landscape painting used mineral pigments such as azurite blue (\u77f3\u9752 ; sh\u00ed q\u012bng) and malachite green (\u77f3\u7eff ; sh\u00ed l\u01dc), for example, Wang Ximeng\u2019s\u300a\u5343\u91cc\u6c5f\u5c71\u56fe\u300b(Qi\u0101nl\u01d0 ji\u0101ngsh\u0101n t\u00fa) from the Northern Song dynasty. In ceramics, blue-and-white porcelain is high-temperature underglaze porcelain with blue designs on a white base; its Qing pigments include Huiqing (\u56de\u9752), Zheqing (\u6d59\u9752), Pitangqing (\u9642\u5510\u9752), Shiqing (\u77f3\u9752), Zhumingliao (\u73e0\u660e\u6599), and Sumaliqing (\u82cf\u9ebb\u79bb\u9752).<\/p>\n

In jewelry making, the Diancui (\u70b9\u7fe0 ; di\u01cen cu\u00ec) technique used kingfisher feathers to create ornaments; this technique existed since the Han dynasty and reached its peak during the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong reigns of the Qing dynasty. In addition, the color Qing also appeared widely in poetic imagery, architectural glaze work, and Qing porcelain.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that is why \u201cQing\u201d can never be translated by a single English word. It is not only a color, but also a feeling, a philosophy, and a part of how Chinese culture understands nature, time, beauty, and life itself. Somewhere between blue and green, Qing quietly carries thousands of years of Chinese aesthetics and memory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did you know that English doesn\u2019t have a word for \u201cQing (\u9752 ; q\u012bng)\u201d color? There is no English word...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":1996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1271,41,1274,1269,1278,1276,1280,1272,1273,1279,1270,1277,1275],"class_list":["post-1995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-culture","tag-chinese-color","tag-chinese-culture","tag-qian-li-jiang-shan-tu","tag-qing","tag-qingsi","tag-qingyi","tag-shiqing","tag-traditional-chinese-color","tag-1273","tag-1279","tag-1270","tag-1277","tag-1275"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zhangruying.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zhangruying.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zhangruying.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zhangruying.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zhangruying.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zhangruying.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zhangruying.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zhangruying.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zhangruying.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zhangruying.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}