The Use and Evolution of Colors in Written Chinese Since the Late Qing Dynasty

Color words serve as the linguistic embodiment of color usage, forming a subsystem of the human vocabulary that is intimately tied to production, life, and emotions. These words carry rich cultural connotations, national characteristics, and reflect the zeitgeist and cultural tendencies. In this paper, we amalgamate Chinese and foreign color theories to analyze the usage, distribution, coloring domains, and co-occurring words of Chinese color words. This analysis is based on data from Chinese newspapers spanning from the Foreign Affairs Movement of the late Qing Dynasty to the present. We map the distribution of color words in Chinese written language over 1872–2015. Our study reveals that different eras are characterized by different theme colors, and color words evolve in tandem with societal development and the enhancement of people’s understanding. The scope, variety, and connotation of color words continue to expand, leading to increasingly rich chromatograms. The coloring domains of color words are becoming more extensive, and their connections with objective entities are becoming more abundant. The usage and evolution of color words are closely linked to policy changes, the social and historical environment, and cultural development. They exhibit a sensitivity to the times, and the national cultural psychology and social customs underlying the color words are also changing. Color words are increasingly dissociating from religion and regime, finding widespread usage in political, economic, and cultural fields, and their importance is steadily increasing.