Wei Wu

In traditional China, colors acted as symbols signifying cosmological concepts, representing rank and implying higher knowledge of the material world. Given the pervasive redness throughout The Dream of the Red Chamber, there has been substantial research on color terminology and its translation. Existing studies, however, whether qualitative or quantitative, focus exclusively on textual sources, and leave material evidence untouched. Furthermore, in previous investigations, different shades of red remain underexplored. This paper builds on available corpus databases, going through all uses containing two main characters for the color red: “chì 赤” – the saturated hue denoting the color of fire – and “hóng 紅” – the name of the fabric dyed in whitish red (pink) in early China, but being synonymous with “chì 赤” in modern Chinese. A solid statistical account will show how their distributions differ, whether their meanings overlap with each other and how much “hóng 紅” refers to the saturated red. In addition to hóng 紅 and chì 赤, the usage of other words for various reddish hues listed in previous studies is also taken into account. A comparison of their combinations with those of hóng 紅 will provide an inclusive representation of “redness” in the novel. Furthermore, artistic images –contemporary Qing paintings in particular – serve as an importance source for the use of “hóng 紅” in architectural contexts, demonstrating what exactly “hóng 紅 ” buildings were like during the Qing dynasty. This detailed analysis of the semantics of redness and its symbolism in the novel will contribute not only to a more precise understanding of the novel's title, but also to a better grasp of its underlying color symbolism.