It was so flamboyant that I felt a slight ache in my eyes when I entered a Chinese supermarket in Downtown. February is Chinese New Year and all the Chinese related stores and restaurants are decorated in red and gold. I agree that red and gold is a happy color combination but It's too stimulating for us Japanese people who prefer "wabi." It's not that we don't like the color of red. Actually we have a large red circle in our national flag. What we can't get used is the usage of the color. When red is used as a background color, we can't help losing our presence of mind. Red is a warning color at least in my mind and I think it's a quite natural taste for most people all over the world because it implies stopping in traffic signals for example. I don't intend to deny the color usage of Chinese people. What I want to know here is whether Chinese people feel peace of mind with the color of red, and how about the Chinese people who were born and brought up out of China. What is the thing which determines the taste of color?
In Russian, the words for "red" and "beautiful" are very similar. This was true long before the communists adopted red as their color, and came to power there. Perhaps long ago, Russians found the color red beautiful.
Posted by: Duden | February 08, 2007 at 06:57 AM
I agree that red is a beautiful color, but do you like to be surrounded by only red? Can you feel peace of mind in a red room where everything is red?
Posted by: mochi | February 08, 2007 at 08:43 AM