Yuebai(月白), qielan(窃蓝) and shiqing(石青). . . Do you know these words about the color blue? It's how ancient Chinese people talked about different kinds of blue—light or deep. Yuebai is not white. It's a kind of blue close to the color of the moonlight.
Ancient Chinese people divided colors into basic colors and mixed colors. There were five basic colors: blue, red, yellow, white and black. People could put them together to get mixed colors. For example, mixing yellow and blue gets green. Thousands of colors came in this way.
Colors have special meanings in Chinese culture. In ancient China, color was a symbol of social positions. For example, yellow stood for power. And officials of different ranks(不同品级的官员) wore clothes with different colors. Only officials of the top three ranks could wear purple clothes. Blue was for those in the two lowest ranks.
In fact, many beautiful color names come from famous works. For example, dongfangjibai(东方既白) is a light blue color. It comes from a work written by Su Shi. The blue color describes the color of the sky before the sun rises. Like this, the pink color taoyao comes from The Book of Poetry (《诗经》). This color describes blooming peach trees(盛开的桃树). Sounds beautiful, right? These colors from ancient China show the understanding of beauty.
