Introduction: From Everyday Taboos to Auspicious Symbols
Taboos and auspiciousness in seasonal festivals often take concrete form in the selection or avoidance of numbers, colors, and homophones. The seemingly trivial practices of "seeking good luck sayings" and "avoiding taboos" actually rest on yin-yang and the five phases, the numerology of the Changes, and linguistic sympathy, constituting an operable symbolic order. This article takes as its material scope the ritual texts, seasonal records, notebooks, and local gazetteers from the pre-Qin period to the Ming and Qing dynasties, and unfolds around three core questions: why numbers are divided into auspicious and inauspicious, why colors determine rank and hierarchy, and why homophones can invoke blessings and avert disaster. The article first discusses the common origin and symbiosis of taboos and auspiciousness in the seasonal cycle, then separately traces the three threads of numbers, colors, and homophones, and finally considers together their sympathetic thought, the interaction between ritual and custom, and their modern transformations, revealing the cultural logic behind seasonal symbols.
1. Taboos and Auspiciousness: Coexistence from the Same Source in the Calendar
Taboos and auspiciousness are not two separate systems, but the two sides, positive and negative, of the same sympathetic psychology. The "law of similarity" and the "law of contact" proposed by Frazer in The Golden Bough can explain why the ancients believed that language, numbers, and colors could directly influence fortune and misfortune. As early as The Book of Rites: Monthly Ordinances, China already recorded month by month the Son of Heaven's dwelling place, clothing colors, and administrative decrees—for example, in the first month of spring, "wear blue-green garments and carry green jade"; in midsummer, "wear vermilion garments and carry red jade"—and if one violated the seasonal ordinances, "the state would suffer great epidemics." This concept of "issuing decrees according to the seasons" linked everyday choices to the cosmic order, making avoidance of taboos and prayers for blessings a routine operation of calendar life rather than an occasional superstitious act.
By the Han dynasty, the theories of yin-yang and the Five Phases, along with the study of prognosticatory texts and apocrypha, were in vogue. The "day taboos" criticized in the "Criticism of Divination" chapter of Lunheng had already penetrated deeply among the common people. Wang Chong listed "building houses, marrying and taking wives, sacrificing, and traveling" as all requiring the selection of days and avoidance of taboos. Although he denounced such practices as false and absurd, this conversely proves how widespread the custom of day selection and taboo avoidance was at the time. From the Tang and Song dynasties onward, calendar taboos became further folklorized. Works such as The Records of the Seasons of Jingchu and The Comprehensive Records of the Seasons detail prohibitions such as not sweeping the floor, not drawing water, and not demanding debts on New Year's Day, while simultaneously carrying out auspicious acts such as pasting door gods, setting off firecrackers, and drinking tusu wine. Taboos and auspiciousness—one guarding, one seeking—together constitute the boundaries and expectations of calendar behavior.
According to The Records of the Seasons of Jingchu, on the first day of the first month, "at the crowing of the rooster, one rises and first sets off firecrackers in the courtyard to drive away mountain demons and evil spirits," and also "pastes a picture of a rooster on the door, hangs reed ropes above it, and inserts peachwood charms beside it; all ghosts fear them." In the same ritual, firecrackers, painted roosters, reed ropes, and peachwood charms contain both the meaning of driving away evil and the wish of welcoming the new. Avoidance of taboos and prayers for blessings are not separated here. Chen Yuanjing of the Song dynasty, in The Comprehensive Records of the Seasons, quotes The Miscellaneous Records of the Seasons as recording that on New Year's Day one "does not draw water, does not sweep the floor, and does not beg for fire," and also records "using peachwood charms, reed ropes, and firecrackers to drive away evil and pray for blessings." This precisely shows that taboos and auspiciousness are often two sides of one thing at the operational level.
This coexistence from the same source is also reflected in the fact that "taboos" are often compensated by "auspiciousness." Liu Tong and Yu Yizheng of the Ming dynasty, in A Brief Account of the Scenery of the Imperial Capital, record Beijing's New Year's Day: "At the fifth watch, if one does not lie down but sneezes, then one should rise quickly upon sneezing, and when the sound of firecrackers is unceasing, then there is joy." Sneezing was originally a sign of bodily discomfort, yet because of the auspiciousness of New Year's Day it was regarded as "joy"—taboo and auspiciousness transform in an instant. Gu Lu of the Qing dynasty, in The Clear and Auspicious Records, records that in Suzhou during the first month, "sweeping the floor, begging for fire, and drawing water are taboo," and also records "offering cakes, fruits, tea, and wine in the hall, called 'offering the year.'" Avoidance of taboos and prayers for blessings proceed in parallel without conflict. It can be seen that in calendar behavior, taboos are not passive avoidance, but rather, through the active installation of auspicious symbols, accomplish the purification of time and space.
2. Numerical Fortune and Misfortune: The Layered Accumulation of Yijing Numerology, the Five Phases, and Folk Custom
The auspiciousness or inauspiciousness of numbers was not formed overnight, but is the result of the layered accumulation of Yijing numerology, the Five Phases, and folk custom. The Zhouyi (Book of Changes) calls yang lines nine and yin lines six; nine is the old yang and six the old yin, and so "nine" in Yijing learning symbolizes the extreme of yang. The Han-dynasty Shuowen Jiezi explains "five" as "the Five Phases," taking five as the central number of heaven and earth; hence "five" is often linked with centrality and completeness, as in the five directions, five colors, and five tones. "Three," because of the Laozi's "three produces the ten thousand things," carries the meaning of generation, while "seven," because of the Changes' "on the seventh day comes return," contains the mechanism of cyclical rebirth. Once these numerical principles seeped into popular life, they became the basis for judging fortune and misfortune.
Viewed through the documentary record, the ritualization of numbers was already visible in the pre-Qin period. The Zuo Zhuan, under the twenty-fifth year of Duke Zhao, records "nine patterns, six colors, five emblems, to serve the five colors," in which nine, six, and five all correspond to ritual ranks. The Rites of Zhou, in the "Record of Trades," notes that "in the matter of painting and drawing, the five colors are intermingled," with the five colors corresponding to the five directions, and numbers accordingly acquiring a sense of order. In the Han dynasty, Dong Zhongshu's Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals, in the chapter "The Meaning of the Five Phases," matched the Five Phases with the four seasons, the five directions, and the five constants, bringing numbers into a cosmological framework. By the Tang and Song, Dunhuang manuscript texts of the Monthly Ordinances type and the Comprehensive Record of Seasonal Customs already show taboos such as "on the first day of the first month, do not kill a chicken" and "on the seventh day, do not kill a sheep," matching day numbers to the six domestic animals, which shows that numbers had acquired a sacred character in the seasonal cycle.
In folk custom, the choosing and avoiding of numbers often proceeds by the double standard of homophony and numerical principle. "Six-six great smoothness" takes the compliant meaning of the six in the Kun hexagram of the Changes; "eight," because in modern Cantonese it sounds like "prosper," is especially auspicious in the south; "four," because it sounds like "death," is avoided; and the taboo on "thirteen" in some regions is mostly related to the introduction of Western culture and a few particular anecdotes, and is not the mainstream of native Chinese numerical taboo. It is worth noting that numerical taboos often shift with region and era: the Chaoshan region avoids "four" but values "seven," because "seven" sounds like "auspicious" or is linked to the custom of "seven-ingredient soup"; Minnan values "six" and "eight," and betrothal gifts are often given in even numbers. The fluidity of numerical fortune and misfortune shows that these are not fixed dogmas, but a dynamic negotiation between language and numerical principle in concrete scenes of life.
The use of numbers in seasonal festivals is especially typical. The seventh day of the first month is Renri, the Day of Humankind; according to the Records of Seasonal Customs of Jingchu, "the seventh day of the first month is the Day of Humankind: one makes soup of seven kinds of vegetables, cuts colored silk into human figures, or carves gold foil into human figures, pastes them on screens, and also wears them in the hair." Here "seven" is the birthday of humankind, and the meaning of "on the seventh day comes return" is also taken. The third day of the third month (Shangsi), the fifth day of the fifth month (Duanwu), the seventh day of the seventh month (Qiqiao), and the ninth day of the ninth month (Chongyang) all have the same number for month and day, and are considered times when yang qi or yin qi is at its height; hence there are both customs of purification and prayer for blessing and warnings of avoidance. At Duanwu, "five" and "wu" (the earthly branch of the noonday hour) coincide; in antiquity "wu" was considered yang, and the noonday of the fifth day of the fifth month was called the Festival of Heaven's Center. Gathering herbs, bathing in orchid water, and tying five-colored silk all take the meaning of warding off evil and protecting health. At Chongyang, "nine" is old yang, and two nines coincide; people wear zhuyu and drink chrysanthemum wine to avoid disaster. In the seasonal cycle, numbers are both time markers and symbols of fortune and misfortune.
Numerical fortune and misfortune are also often combined with life rituals such as age and marriage. Gu Lu of the Qing, in his Qingjia Lu, records the Suzhou marriage custom that "betrothal gifts must use even numbers, taking the meaning of pairing"; the Record of the Scenes and Objects of the Imperial Capital records that in Beijing "taking a wife with even numbers is auspicious." And the Book of Rites, in "The Summary of Ritual, Part One," states: "In life, at ten years one is called young and begins to study; at twenty one is called weak and receives the cap; at thirty one is called strong and has a wife; at forty one is called vigorous and enters office; at fifty one is called gray-haired and serves in government; at sixty one is called elderly and may direct others; at seventy one is called old and may transmit one's duties; at eighty and ninety one is called very old; at seven one is called a child in mourning. Even if the child in mourning and the very old commit an offense, punishment is not applied to them." This division of age by tens, interwoven with the folk meanings of numbers such as "seven" and "eight," makes numbers the temporal coordinates of life rituals.
3. Color Hierarchy: The Five-Color System and Ritual Transformation
In Chinese ritual institutions, color was never purely a visual matter, but a symbol of hierarchy and cosmic order. The Book of Documents, in the "Yi and Ji" chapter, records that "the five colors were displayed and applied to the five hues, and garments were made"; the Rites of Zhou, in the "Kao Gong Ji" chapter, states that "in the affairs of painting and drawing, the five colors are intermingled: what is called blue in the east, red in the south, white in the west, black in the north, dark in heaven, and yellow in earth," already correlating the five colors with the five directions and with heaven and earth. In the Han dynasty, Dong Zhongshu's Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals, in the "Five Phases" section, further paired the five phases with the five colors: wood with blue, fire with red, earth with yellow, metal with white, and water with black, bringing color into the interpretive system of yin-yang and the five phases, endowing it with derivable auspicious and inauspicious properties.
The dress-color regulations of successive dynasties were the most direct embodiment of color hierarchy. In the Book of Rites, the "Monthly Ordinances" chapter, the Son of Heaven's seasonal dress colors changed with the seasons: blue in spring, red in summer, yellow in late summer, white in autumn, and black in winter, reflecting the ritual thinking of "nourishing heaven with seasonal colors." From the Qin and Han dynasties onward, dress colors gradually became linked to political virtue and destiny—for instance, the Qin favored black and the early Han favored red, both based on the principles of the five phases overcoming or generating one another. The Book of Han, in the "Treatise on Pitch Pipes and the Calendar," records that "when Han arose, it inherited the Qin system and favored red"; by the time Emperor Wu of Han reformed the calendar, yellow was favored, and the dynasty claimed the virtue of earth. Thereafter, dress-color regulations changed repeatedly across the dynasties, until the Tang dynasty's "Ordinances on Clothing" stipulated the dress colors of ranked officials: purple for those of the third rank and above, vermilion for the fifth rank and above, green for the sixth rank and above, and blue for the ninth rank and above, making color a visual marker of official rank. The Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties largely followed this system, except that the Ming favored vermilion, while the Qing made azurite and deep crimson the dominant colors of official dress.
In popular seasonal customs, the selection and avoidance of colors likewise followed the logic of the five phases and ritual institutions. On New Year's Day, people "paste red paper, hang red lanterns, and wear red clothing," because red belongs to fire, governs yang energy, and can ward off yin evil. At the Dragon Boat Festival, people "tie five-colored silk threads"; the Records of the Seasons of Jing and Chu states that "one ties five-colored silk threads on the arm, which is called 'warding off weapons' and prevents illness and plague." The five colors correspond to the five phases, and the mutual generation and overcoming of the five phases is invoked to protect the body. On the Double Ninth Festival, people "wear dogwood and pin chrysanthemums"; dogwood is red and chrysanthemums are yellow, and both red and yellow belong to yang, matching the old yang of the double ninth. In seasonal customs, color was not merely decoration but a symbolic operation with a clear functional orientation.
Color taboos also shifted with ritual institutions and beliefs. Mourning rites favor white, because among the five colors white belongs to metal, governs autumn, and governs solemn destruction, corresponding to the yin of death. The Rites of Zhou, in the "Spring Offices: Director of Clothing" chapter, records that "in great epidemics, great famines, and great disasters, plain garments are worn"; plain garments are white and were used for calamities and funerals. Weddings favor red, taking the yang of fire and the abundance of life, forming a sharp contrast with the white of mourning. This color logic of red-white opposition still profoundly influences Chinese folk life today. In addition, after the Tang dynasty, yellow gradually became a color exclusively for emperors. Wang Mao of the Song dynasty, in his Collected Writings of the Rustic Guest, records that "in the early Wude era of Emperor Gaozu of Tang, the Sui system was used, and the Son of Heaven regularly wore a yellow robe, whereupon scholars and commoners were forbidden to wear it." Thereafter, "donning the yellow robe" became a symbol of imperial power, and the common people avoided bright yellow. The changes in color hierarchy were both the result of ritual adjustments and the continuous intervention of political power in the symbolic system.
4. Homophonic Blessing: Linguistic Sympathy and Folk Rhetoric
Homophonic blessing is a typical manifestation of linguistic sympathetic magic in folk customs. Its logical foundation is the belief in "word spirit"—that a mysterious connection exists between language and the things it refers to, that speaking auspicious words can summon auspicious events, and that speaking inauspicious words may bring misfortune. This notion already showed traces in the pre-Qin period. The Book of Songs (Shijing) often uses images such as "mandarin ducks" and "qilin" to open a stanza; although these are not direct homophones, they already possess the embryonic form of symbolic meaning-taking. In the Han dynasty, the Shuowen Jiezi extensively used sound glosses, such as "yang, auspiciousness" and "lu, emolument," explaining character meanings by similar sounds, reflecting the universality of linguistic sympathetic thinking.
Among seasonal festivals, homophonic blessing is most concentrated. On New Year's Day, eating "fish" takes "surplus year after year," eating "rice cake" takes "rising higher year after year," and eating "dumplings" takes "bringing in wealth and treasure" because their shape resembles ingots; on New Year's Eve, when keeping vigil, eating "water chestnut" takes "must be together," and eating "blood clam" takes "getting rich," all taking auspiciousness by near sounds. Liu Ruoyu of the Ming, in Zhuozhong Zhi, records that in the palace on New Year's Day people "ate water pastries, namely flatbreads, sometimes secretly wrapping one or two silver coins inside; whoever got one used it to divine the luck of the year." Wrapping coins in dumplings and divining by whoever got one merged homophony and divination into one. Gu Lu of the Qing, in Qingjia Lu, records that in Suzhou on New Year's Day people "placed cypress, persimmon, and tangerine on a lacquered tray, calling it 'a hundred affairs greatly auspicious'": cypress is homophonous with "hundred," persimmon with "affairs," and tangerine with "auspicious." The combination of three objects formed a single auspicious phrase, showing that homophonic blessing had developed a mature "rhetoric of objects."
Homophonic avoidance and blessing are two sides of the same coin. Because "pear" is homophonous with "separation," splitting pears is avoided at weddings and reunions; because "umbrella" is homophonous with "scatter," giving umbrellas as gifts is avoided; because "clock" is homophonous with "end," giving clocks for birthday celebrations is avoided; because "shoe" is homophonous with "evil," some regional wedding customs avoid giving shoes. These taboos are not uniform nationwide but shift with dialect and custom. In Cantonese-speaking areas, for example, "eight" is homophonous with "prosper," so eight became an auspicious number; "four" is homophonous with "death," so four is avoided. In Mandarin-speaking areas, "four" and "death" are near in sound, but "four" is read "fa" in numbered musical notation and thus linked with "prosper," so there is the flexible saying "four-four as one wishes." The elasticity of homophonic good and bad fortune precisely shows that its foundation lies not in the sounds themselves but in the cultural psychology of users and the specific context.
Homophonic blessing also deeply participates in architecture, decoration, and naming. In traditional dwellings, "bat" is homophonous with "fortune," "deer" with "emolument," and "peach" with "longevity," forming the pattern of the three stars Fortune, Emolument, and Longevity; doors and windows carved with "magpie on plum" are homophonous with "joy rising to the eyebrows," and "lotus and fish" with "surplus year after year." Li Yu of the Qing, in Xianqing Ouji, discussing room decoration, advocated "taking auspicious verbal meaning," reflecting the literati class's self-conscious use of homophonic rhetoric. This way of blessing, using sound as its bond and objects as its carrier, gives abstract auspicious phrases a perceptible and tangible form, making it the most creative symbolic practice in folk life.
5. Sympathetic Thought and the Interaction of Ritual and Custom: The Operating Mechanism of Symbols
The reason the three threads of numbers, colors, and homophony can operate in concert is that they share a single system of sympathetic thought. This mode of thinking holds that hidden correspondences and resonances exist among all things: like calls to like, and kindred sounds answer one another. Dong Zhongshu, in "Like Things Moving Like Things" in Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals, wrote that "auspicious matters summon auspicious kinds, inauspicious matters summon inauspicious kinds," classifying natural phenomena and human fortune and misfortune as like responding to like. Within this framework, numbers can connect to the Five Phases, colors to directions, and sounds to fortune and misfortune; the three interpenetrate and mutually explain one another, forming an operable network of symbols. Seasonal taboos and auspiciousness are precisely the concrete unfolding of this network at particular points in time.
The interaction of ritual and custom is the key to sustaining this symbolic network. Upper-level ritual institutions provided authoritative grounds for colors and numbers, while popular beliefs transformed them into practicable everyday rules. Take the Dragon Boat Festival as an example. Since the pre-Qin period, the fifth month was regarded as an "evil month." The Book of Rites, in the "Monthly Ordinances," records that in midsummer "yin and yang contend, and life and death divide," hence the taboo that "on the fifth day of the fifth month, one does not raise a child born in the fifth month." By the Northern and Southern Dynasties, The Annual Customs of Jingchu already recorded that "on the fifth day of the fifth month, the four classes of people all tread upon the hundred grasses, and there is also the game of contending with the hundred grasses; they gather mugwort to make figures and hang them above the doorways to avert poisonous qi," so that taboo interwove with entertainment and the invocation of blessings. After the Tang and Song, Dragon Boat Festival customs such as dragon boat racing, casting zongzi into the river, and tying five-colored silk threads combined the ritual narrative of commemorating Qu Yuan with the folk functions of warding off evil and preserving health; ritual and custom together shaped the festival's symbolic system through their interaction.
The interaction of ritual and custom also manifests as the "ritualization" of taboos and the "classicization" of auspiciousness. For example, "nine," as the extreme of yang numbers, was used in ritual institutions for the regulations of the Son of Heaven, as when the Rites of Zhou records that "the Son of Heaven has nine ding vessels," while among the people it evolved into the Double Ninth Festival's climbing of heights to pray for blessings. In terms of color, red gradually moved down from the "crimson" of pre-Qin ritual institutions to become the common festive color of the people, while yellow moved up from the "virtue of earth" to become a color reserved exclusively for emperors; in this upward and downward flow, the meanings of symbols were constantly redefined. In terms of homophony, many auspicious phrases, such as "fortune, emolument, and longevity" and "surplus year after year," were collected by literati into notebooks and encyclopedias, and even written into family instructions, rising from oral folk belief to written tradition and achieving a reverse infiltration from folk custom to classic.
6. Modern Transformations: Continuity and Reconstruction of Symbols
In modern times, seasonal taboos and auspicious symbols have undergone a dual process of continuity and reconstruction. On the one hand, traditional symbols have tenaciously persisted among the people—such as pasting red couplets, setting off firecrackers, and giving red envelopes during the Spring Festival; tying five-colored silk threads and wearing fragrant sachets during the Dragon Boat Festival; and eating mooncakes and admiring the moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Although the logic of auspiciousness and inauspiciousness behind them has faded, the behavioral patterns are still widely practiced. On the other hand, urbanization, modernization, and globalization have brought about a reorganization of symbols. For example, "eight" became popular nationwide because it sounds like "prosper" in Cantonese; the avoidance of "four" and its association with "fa" (prosper) in numbered musical notation have formed a new negotiation; and the introduction of Western holidays such as Valentine's Day and Christmas has brought new symbols like roses and Christmas trees into the auspicious system, coexisting with traditional symbols.
Digital technology has further reconstructed the way symbols are disseminated. In the internet era, numerical homophones have been created and spread on a massive scale, such as "520" sounding like "I love you," "1314" sounding like "for a lifetime," and "88" sounding like "bye-bye" or "prosper prosper." Although these new symbols originate from traditional homophonic logic, they have broken free from the temporal and spatial constraints of seasonal festivals and become universal codes for everyday social interaction. At the same time, traditional color symbols are being reinterpreted in fashion, design, and commerce—for instance, "China red" has become the core color of national image and festive design, while "blue-green" has been revived through works such as Poetic Dance: The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting. Color has shifted from ritual hierarchy to aesthetics and identity.
Academic research is also driving a renewed understanding of symbols. Since the twentieth century, scholars such as Gu Jiegang, Zhong Jingwen, and Wu Bing'an have systematically organized folk taboos and auspicious culture, stripping them of the "superstition" discourse and bringing them into the research scope of folklore and anthropology. Jiang Shaoyuan's Hair, Beard, and Nails, with its meticulous examination of sympathetic magic, provides a methodological reference for understanding numbers, colors, and homophones. The contemporary intangible cultural heritage protection movement has listed festivals such as the Spring Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, and Double Ninth Festival, along with their symbolic practices, in protection registers, elevating them from everyday customs to cultural heritage. The continuity and reconstruction of symbols is both a reaffirmation of tradition and a continuous re-creation of its meaning in new social contexts.
Conclusion
The numbers, colors, and homophones found in calendrical taboos and auspicious culture are not isolated fragments of folk custom, but a symbolic system that shares a logic of sympathetic resonance and rests on the Five Phases and the magical power of language. Numbers distinguish good fortune from ill by way of divinatory figures and the Five Phases; colors establish rank and hierarchy through the system of the five colors; homophones link fortune and misfortune by taking meaning from near-identical sounds. The three interpenetrate and explain one another, unfolding at calendrical nodes into practicable acts of avoidance and blessing-seeking. From the injunction in the "Monthly Ordinances" chapter of The Book of Rites to issue orders in accordance with the season, to the folk records of The Records of the Seasons of Jingchu and A Record of the Clear and Auspicious, and on to contemporary number homophones and intangible cultural heritage protection, this symbolic order has been continuously extended, adjusted, and reconstructed.
Understanding this logic not only helps explain everyday puzzles such as "why must red paper be pasted up at the New Year" or "why is a clock never given as a gift," but further reveals the deep wisdom in Chinese culture of "arranging life through symbols." In today's globalized and digitalized world, traditional symbols face both the risk of being diluted and new spaces for expression. How, while respecting their historical logic, to creatively transform these symbols so that they continue to serve the emotions and identities of contemporary people is a task that folklore studies, cultural studies, and public practice must confront together.