Chinese Talk - Ma Sing Ling - Form of Unity／Purple Energy from the East

Form of Unity／Purple Energy from the East‧Great News!
Oil on Canvas 2012
162 X 130cm


Have you ever seen sunrise in the early morning with red sun accompanied by golden rays? This is normal condition, while one day during East Zhou dynasty in ancient China, Yinxi (尹喜), who was a guard at the western gate found out purple clouds passed over the red sun from east to west. Yinxi was good at Chinese divination and foresaw some extraordinary person would come soon according to the result about the odd clouds.

After several days, one old man riding an indigo blue cattle, came to the gate. The old man is 老子 Lao3 zi2 (pinyin, circa 100 BCE), who grew weary of the moral decay of city life and noted the kingdom's decline, and he ventured west to live as a hermit in the unsettled frontier. LaoZi was invited to stay at the gate city, and encouraged by YinXi to write down some words for people who want to learn. And the words from LaoZi, 5000 words in total, made of the famous book, Tao Te Ching (often simply referred to as Laozi).

After then, Chinese use "Purple Energy from the East" 紫氣東來 to describe great news and fortune come.



For more information about the artwork from MaSingLing, please visit the website, MaSingLing 瑪馨玲 Art World .

More details about purple color in Chinese culture follow as below, 

紫 zhi3 (PinYin)

This word means color of purple, and this color formed from red and blue colors.

The character of 紫 could be divided into 此 (upper part, read as ci3- pinyin)+ 糸 (lower part, read as si-pinyin) two parts.
此 ci3 means "this" and "right", like right here, right time, right person..this time, this place, this person..etc.  


During the Han Dynasty, bright purple was often regarded as an extremely precious and rare color. In the Tang dynasty, the color purple was used in the clothing of officials ranking
above the "fifth class" and was a color favored by royal court members.
Purple borders were considered elegant. (Brief Introduction to Chinese Culture: Colors in Traditional Chinese Culture)