Ming Multitude Bird and flower painting

Back to the Birds. More comments on cultural diversity next post.

The Ming dynasty seems to have produced extra-ordinary excellence in bird and flower paintings with complex compositions and rich detail. Notice that while this painting is called Birds with Peonies the artist has also included willows and plum and the wonderful contrast of black and white smaller birds with the flashy peacocks and one silver pheasant counterbalancing that contrast. Then you have the tail of the upper peacock perched on the rock leading your eye up and down the painting paralleling the tree trunk. A masterpiece of detail color layout and composition.

Mukuge

So what's this photo got to do with Hanzi?

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Well its a Hibiscus  and maybe even judging from images I  consulted the East Asian Hibiscus Syriacus sometimes called a Rose of Sharon in English and Mukuge in Japanese.

I think this purple flower may be a modern breeders development though?

The Mukuge is called Mugunghwa or GEUN or KUN in Korean and JIN in modern Chinese.

Perhaps it says something about the variety of colors various types of hibiscus come in that the phonetic part of the character below refers to  yellow loess clay?

copyright julie vaux 2013

There's also a haiku by Basho referring to this plant which apparently horses as well as lovers of herbal teas find tasty.

Michi nobe no mukuge wa uma ni kuware keri.

Finally a reminder you are welcome to copy any images featured in this blog for educational and research  purposes but do include a link back or shock me and use the paypal tip jar? Electricity isnt free and I do have wireless modem broadband costs?

ORCHID SEQUENCE ONE

LAN will be the topic of the next few Technozi blogs.

LAN usually gets translated as ORCHID but the plant the Chinese are usually referring to are cymbidiums like the one above .

The word is used by itself and in compounds to refer to a variety of flowers ranging from from cymbidiums to tropical orchids irises and even magnolias which are called jade orchids!

Here's$ variants of  the character !

I've taken images form several sources and combined them to show you left to right
first the traditional regular script form then a xing shu and below left right you have the cursive form and beside it seal script.

More on Lan orchids and Cymbidiums next time so follow this blog!

The Chinese Plum or Japanese Apricot er Plum

Translating plant names from Chinese into English can be tricky.

Possibly whoever chose PLUM to translate MEI either hadn't seen the fruit or was familiar with one of the varieties of plum that have golden orange flesh and a slight golden tinge rather than being deep red or purple.

MEI is PRUNUS MUME

Notice the color of the fruit. Its not very sweet and is used for making plum and other sauces that require a touch of sourness to counterbalance sweetness.

I have no idea if there is an equivalent Chinese fruit to our purplish plums. Perhaps the LI plum is sweet.

There's a wide variety of Prunus trees grown in China.

I suspect what caused the confusion is the color of the flowers which range from white to pink.

ENJOY