The world becomes lively because it is decorated with a myriad of colors. In either the countryside of blossoms amid lush green vegetation of nature or cities with metropolis buildings of attractive styles and forms, we are always surrounded by a world of colors.

According to scientists, colors are merely impacts of lights of varying waves on the human visual nerves. But to mankind, colors are not just physical phenomena. Thery are meaning of emotional expressions, for they convey values,ideas and aspirations. In the long human history, colors have attained profound cultural connotations that transcend their natural attributes.

A sage once said:" Color is a kind of languages of the most popular natural among all artiscle tools." Color originates in nature, appears in daily life and finds its expression in history. A particular colr therefore may become the favorite of one nation, a symbol of a country, the keynote of a culture.

The Chinese are good at using colors. All colors in the great nature may lend tremendous inspirations to the Chinese, whether it is the golden yellow ears of grain crops on the vast Chinese hinterland, the white snow of northern China, the green mountains and rivers of southern China. In the traditional Chinese culture, and its art in particular, colors may present themselves in dazing brilliance of numberless hues or in sober quierness of black, white and varying graays in between; in the majestry of the imperial palaces that hold commoners in awe or in the blre of indigo print garments of rustic folks; in paitings and embroidery of bright tints or in the purity of white porcelain and translucent jade...

And colors have instilled vigor and vitally into the daily life of the Chinese common people. The people of Han nationality in the villages in the Yellow River valley like to paste brightly red scolls and New-Year pictures on their doors and walls during the Spring Festival. Young ladies of Miao hamlets in the mountainous Southwest China add to the festivity of their national holidays with their national costumes of cloth woven with yarns of black, white, yellow, blue, purple, red and orange colors. On the vast Inner Mongolia grasslands, the herdsman love to dress in red robes against the backdrop of greenlands and azure sky with floating puffs of white clouds. At the foot of the snow-capped peaks. Tibetans prefer to have their outer walls plastered in pure white and honor their guests with white silk ceremonial scarves which they call "hata."

Colors in their numerous mainfestations are in correspondence to different facets of people's lives. Red, for example, reminds people of festivity and auspices among the Chinese people whereas the color of white sometimes means bad omen in the Han culture. Even colors like bright yellow, deep purple and transparent blue were the monopoly of certain social strata at certain periods of time in Chinese history and those colors with their original attributes lost for long today remain to associations in people's minds.

The richness of colors serves as a deposit of the sentiments and wisdom of the Chinese people and meanwhile it carries the unique cultural memories of the chinese. It has the function of a key to a special door of the Chinese mind and it is capable of ushering outsiders to savoring the flavors of colorful China.