The Color of Blood

Red is the color of blood. Despite all the other species that have no hemoglobin in the blood, red is the color of blood running inside most living creatures. “In language after language, the word for red is an ancient one” (Greenfield, p.2). It is the color of blood, it is the color of fire, it is the color of sun. “Throughout much of the world, red represents events and emotions at the core of the human condition. Danger and courage, revolution and war, violence and sin, desire and passion, even life itself” (Greenfield, p.2).

It is the color symbolized in an extreme way, a color that runs in your own body that you could embrace with all your heart and also hate it and be scared of it at the same time.

In many countries, emperors wore red robes to symbolize power and prestige, wealthy people wore bright red colors to show their dignity, a cardinal in Rome wore red robe. In Chinese culture, the color red has been in an irreplaceable position. Throughout Chinese history, from ancient times to contemporary society, the color red has represented the whole Chinese culture, exactly like the running blood in the heart of this empire. Red has been a color for everyone. It is the symbol of joy and luck.

Red is such a basic color for Chinese, and it also has become such a stereotype in the West. Although red goes with the skin and hair color, it doesn’t mean that Chinese people wear in red all the time. In Hollywood films, a Chinese woman wearing scarlet lipstick and red clothes combined with a few kung-fu tricks sounds terrific. It is true that Chinese do wear red clothes, especially on special occasions. The Chinese traditional wedding dress is red. This kind of red is called Vermilion, also known as Chinese red. The bride would dress up in this complicated red dress with phoenix embroidery and wear a silver phoenix cornet covered with red hood, and would sit into the red sedan chair. The groom did not wear red, but he would carry a big red peony in front of his chest. All the dowries and hope chests along with the wedding parade would be tied up in red ribbons and also had peonies on them. Red candles, red table covers, red decorations have all been used until nowadays. They are all symbols of joy and good luck. During Chinese traditional New Year holidays, people put up spring festival couplets, which are red; set up fireworks to scare away the New Year’s Monster, which are red; the lucky underwear for gambling or mahjong games, is also red. Children happily collect all the red envelopes with money inside on New Year’s Eve. This long steady traditional culture brings us joy and blessing. The whole time, we are filled with the brightest color in the air that shines through the night until the last minute before the New Year. When there is a place with joyful cheer and warmth, there is a place hidden beneath the flame.

There stood four women in front of four hallways in an atrium, facing the same direction, waiting in anxiety but showed no expression on their faces. An old servant walked leisurely into the atrium. In his hand he held a big red lantern that glows in the dark. This evening, this big red lantern went to the fourth wife of the mansion. The master of the house, stayed over night with the woman who owned this great privilege. Raise the Red Lantern, a movie about the period just before China’s Cultural Revolution, directed by Zhang Yimou, is about how a powerful man who embraces the traditional culture can easily trample down unsophisticated girls, turned them into slaves of prestige. This film reflected the corruption of traditional Chinese culture. The red lanterns, which should have presented luck and joy, have turned into the cage of free minds. Where the luck goes, there the endless desire grows. Some of the symbolic use for red from ancient Chinese culture has become a burden carried on our shoulders, chains tied around ourselves.
This chain could chain up a large amount of people. It is not only a color anymore; it turns into a spirit, a method, a discipline. Red happened to be in the names of important historical events or tragedies throughout the history of Chinese. The famous long novel from the Ching Dynasty, The Dream of the Red Chamber, was a tragedy about a big chamber in which a group of wealthy people lived in, and the love story hidden under. Red-Color News Soldiers (Li) of the China’s Cultural Revolution were the most dangerous and powerful weapon for the revolution, the masses of royalty to the leader Mao; just recently in Taiwan’s political event, the “red” campaigners gathered on the street to ask President Chen Shui-Bian to step down from his position. This passionate color has become a radical one.

Red as blood should be a sign of energy and life. It represents a healthy body, a fresh mind and life. We often observe the condition of a human’s health by testing the blood or simply looking at one’s complexion. When shopping in a traditional market, we look at a fish’s gill to see if it is red enough to show how fresh it is. Elders in families do not like to see girls wearing heavy make up like smoky eye lids or dark nail colors, especially those black or purple lips. They are concerned it is the color of the death. A person with such a color means illness and he or she appears like a dead body without fresh blood. In a Jewish concentration camp, a new group of victims had just arrived. They got separated into women, men, and children. In a documentary film about a Nazi’s concentration camp during World War Two which I saw a few years ago, the Jewish women were undressing in panic; after that, they started to bite their fingers. The blood came out from their fingertips and they used it to color their cheeks and lips. The blood seemed not enough, and there were no mirrors. They kept squeezing their fingers for blood and helped each other putting on the healthy color. They would be evaluated, and some of them who were not qualified would have to go to the “shower room”. How vital the color could be!

The power of this color seems to come from its extreme matter itself. People used to share their blood to show love and trust; when two men wanted to be blood brothers, they mixed their blood in one bowl; when two men wanted to make a contract, they used seals with red inks, and it might be because of it was a symbol of trust through the color of blood. Nowadays, we don’t share our blood anymore; human’s greatest tragedy might be AIDS. It is a disease with no cure so far. It is contagious by blood, and mostly by the action of passion and love. A red ribbon becomes the symbol for the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, a ribbon made of blood.

This color happens to create heaven and hell through our life. Step back and think for a while; somehow it is the color that floats in all of us. To think on the bright side, it might also be the only and the last color that brings peace between different people, different races. No matter how different the cultures are and how obviously distinctive our appearances are, the truth is, the source of life has come out to be the same color. (If you don’t believe it, let us cut our fingers and take a look right now. But please don’t share the same tools.)

Work Cited
Ben, Tang. Tang Ben Forum. .
Berardinelli, James. “Raise the Red Lantern-a movie review.” .
Greenfield, Amy Butler. A Perfect Red. New York: HarversCollins Publishers Inc, 2005.
Joint United Nations Program. .
Li, Zhengsheng. Red-Color News Soldiers. Robert Pledge, Jacques Menasche and Jonathan D. Spence. New York: Phaidon Press Inc., 2003.
Raise the Red Lantern. [Da hong deng long gao gao gua] Directed by Zhang Yi-mou. Screenplay by Ni Zhen. Novel by Su Tong. Producer, Chiu Fu-sheng, 1991.