European descriptions of porcelain paintings that have story scenes tend to describe ‘figures and surroundings’, rather than identifying them. Thus, a large part of those beautiful stories intended by pot painters was lost in the description. Here...

In Chinese porcelain painting, it can be tricky to interpret a round disc in the sky as a sun or a moon. Knowledge of Chinese culture and pun rebuses are the keys to explain the meanings of the motifs and scenes correctly. Here are some examples…<...

Pun Design ：

Five + Boy + Fighting over + Helmet

Punning Details：

– The action of five (more or fewer) boys fighting over something refers to ‘夺 duo’. ‘Five’ is a function word.

– ‘kui 盔 helmet’, ...

Sima Guang (司马光, 1019-1086) is an eminent scholar and politician during the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127) in China. His greatest achievement in life is compiling a chronicle of 1,362 years’ history of China from 403 BCE to 959 CE. The book is entitled Zizhi Tongjian (资治通鉴), or ‘Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of ...

Wang Xiang (王祥 185-269) served as the Grand Protector (taibao 太保) in the Western Jin court (西晋 265-316 CE) and, as a significant politician, has his biography in the Book of Jin (jinshu 晋书), an official historical text covering the dynasty’s history. When Wang Xiang was a boy, his mother passed away. Hi...

The action of ‘pointing to the sun’ is termed in Chinese as ‘指日 zhi ri’, which sounds and looks exactly the same as (both homophone and homograph of) the phrase ‘指日 zhi ri’ meaning ‘in a few days’ time’. The state of ‘something rising high up’ is ‘高升 gao sheng’ in Chinese, which may be metaphor...