Each culture has its own symbolic systems of visual communication that are understood by the culture at large to mean specific things. For example, for viewers with no background of Chinese language and culture, the combination of objects in the following design verges on nonsense.
When we encounter an image, we have to identify the visual elements in it in order to understand its basic (literal) meaning, on the basis of which, further contextual meaning and implications of the image can be inferred.
A very large part of traditional visual life in the late imperial China consists of images to be decoded by a culturally and linguistically specific mechanism – punning rebus. The use of pun rebuses as a mechanism to convey a specific message (usually auspicious or edifying) through images is widespread in Chinese decorative arts. A pun rebus is fundamentally designed to cue an underlying expression articulated through images which may be seemingly unrelated to the signified meaning. Pun rebuses appeared in paintings rendered by and for emperors by professional painters and nianhua wood-block prints, as well as on metalwork, ceramics, and textiles, in the environment of every social stratum, from the emperor’s court to commoners’ kitchen, crossing boundaries of power, wealth, education, and media. To a large extent, pun rebuses overlaps with another conspicuous Chinese cultural characteristic -auspicious visuality (i.e. graphic devices designed to imbue the environment with luck-attractive and evil-quelling messages) - in that the majority of them were and are still used to express basic human desires for longevity, security and prosperity in life, and multiplying of one’s own genes.
In creating pun rebuses, craftsmen and artists tried to deploy whatever attractive images they could put their hands on in everyday life or some imaged realms and then weave them, on most occasions, into plausibly natural scenes.
In this paper, I will present a set of general protocols for the designing of pun rebuses on the basis of a survey of more than 400 variations, composed of combinations of 100-odd basic elements, in my database.
In spite of its omnipresence in daily life, no substantial study of this visual spectacle was carried out in China by any member of the writing elite. [Note 1] One reason could be that the exemplars of this category spread over a wide range of media, many of which were not considered to be worth studying by the elite. The other could be that, to an educated and informed viewer, this phenomenon may be too obvious to be worth serious pondering.
The first single major study of this subject was carried out by Nozaki Nobuchika, a Japanese trader working in China, resulted in a reference book entitled Kissho zuan haidai Shina fuzoku no ichi kenkyu (Explanatory Notes on Auspicious Graphics – A Study of an Aspect of the Chinese Custom), published in Tianjin in 1928. This book has collected around 185 variations of pun rebus, each of which has been given a description of how it has come to acquire the specific meaning (mainly through punning, complemented by symbolic equation).
[Note 1] Bickford (1999:128) suggests two reasons for a related issue: ‘In the traditional Chinese literature on art and aesthetics there is no general category for auspicious devices, or visual manifestations of desired outcomes. Perhaps any such rubric would cover so many images and objects, traversing such a long period of time, that it was considered to be useless as an analytic device. Or perhaps such a category would have transgressed the entrenched class distinctions that were maintained by the traditional scholars who organized Chinese culture for themselves and for us as well.’ Bickford, Maggie, Three Rams and Three Friends: the Working Lives of Chinese Auspicious Motifs, Asia Major Vol. XII Volume 12, part 1, 1999, pp. 127 – 158, p. 128.
The basic mechanism of pun rebuses operates through the interaction between imagery, morphology, and phonology. Generally speaking, the interpretation of pun rebuses is based on homophonous links between the words for the names of the images and / or for their interactions and the words for the concepts that partially or fully constitute the intended message. The two essential parties in this phenomenon have no proper names before and in this study I would like to call them ‘the pun signifier’, for the half of the pun that derives from the presented image, and ‘the pun signified’, for the other half of the pun that expresses the intended message.
Possible Reasons for the Omnipresence of Pun Rebuses in Chinese Decorative Arts
The Chinese language contains many more coincidences of sound with a different meaning – technically known as ‘homonyms’ than any known major languages in the world. Modern Standard Chinese has only about 400 full syllables, and only around 1,300 variations when their tones are varied – resulted in far more homophones than those in languages like English or French. This is the logical consequence of the clash between a very limited set of possible sound forms and myriad concepts used in verbal communication.
The limited number of possible lexical sound forms in the Chinese language is caused by the lack of consonant clusters in its syllabic structure and its monosyllabic tendency in its early forms, as opposed to the situation in the lexicon of an alphabetical language like English, which contains mostly multi-syllabic words and usually has more varieties of consonant clusters (especially in Czech).
Some early Chinese dialects had a lexicon rich in monosyllabic words (mononyms), some of which still remain in contemporary dialects such as Cantonese and many of which have turned into monosyllabic word-building primes in the standard modern Chinese. For example, mei 美 (beautiful) has become meili 美丽 (beautiful). On the other hand, the early development of a non-phonetic (versus an alphabetical one as those commonly used in the West) writing system with a logographic nature in the Chinese language seems to have consolidated this tendency, resulting in many monosyllabic concepts / words, e.g. fu 福 (wealth), shou 寿 (longevity), guan 官(officialdom), etc. which are still in current use in their written form.
In the Chinese writing system, the counterpart of an English word is zi 字 (character, which is a mononym) – a monosyllabic written graph that in most cases can stand by itself or be combined with other zi to represent a concept.
For example, 铝 lv [1 syllable], as opposed to the English equivalent ‘aluminium’ [4 syllables] 马上 ma shang [2 syllables], as opposed to the English equivalent ‘immediately’ [5 syllables]
The names of the objects within a pun rebus design is homophonically similar or even identical to the cued expression and such a design is intended to trigger a process of “image-sound-sound-meaning” translation (as opposed to the more direct, simple-decoding mode of ‘image-meaning’) in the viewer’s mind. Because the process is linguistically specific, it is impossible for an uninformed viewer to decipher any underlying meanings of this art form. Hence, these works may be taken as works designed purely for aesthetic or narrative purposes.
Although the fundamental use of a pun rebus is to express meaning through the homophonic relationship between the signifier – the image and the signified – the message, not all pun rebuses achieve this purpose in the same way. A framework of the general protocols for the designing of pun rebuses is presented below.
The framework consists of five aspects to account for different methods involved in expressing meaning through punning rebuses:
[1] relationship between images used and concepts conveyed [2] modes of relationship between images [3] ways of punning: different levels of similarity between the sound of the signifier and that of the signified [4] degrees of explicitness in verbal explanation [5] ways of deriving the pun signifier [6] relationship between the pun signified and the intended message
[1.0] The relationship between images and concepts
On the one hand, the same image may mean different things in different visual contexts or in the company of different objects; the image of an object may serve as a cue for more than one concept. On the other hand, different images may cue the same concept in different visual contexts.
[1.1] The same image may mean different things in different contexts
The image of deer lu 鹿 may represent the concept of ‘emolument’ lu 禄, as in:
Or it may represent part of the expression de lu 得路 (= being successful in passing civil service examinations and getting official positions).
Images of sheep or ram, yang 羊, may represent xiang 祥 (auspiciousness):
Or it may represent yang 阳 (the male force in the universe) in the punning rebus ‘sanyang kaitai 三阳开泰.’ The saying is from Yi jing 易经 (The Book of Changes) and signifies that spring returns to the earth and everything under the sun looks fresh and will have a prosperous future.
[1.2] Different images may cue the same concept in different contexts.
Both the image of deer lu 鹿 and that of egret lu 鹭 may be used to represent lu 路 in the saying san yuan de lu 三元得路 ‘May you succeed in getting the first in all of the three civil service examinations.’
[2.0] Different Modes of Relationship Between Images
[2.1] Concepts are Expressed Through the Names of Objects (animals, plants, etc.)
[2.1.1] Relationship Between the Objects is Natural in Everyday Life
Scenes such as ‘a cat staring at a butterfly’ and ‘Quails under rice plants’ may be perceived by people from different cultures as ‘natural’ ones.
[2.1.2] the relationship between the objects is possible in everyday world but is clearly designed for expressing a particular meaning.
Designs belonging to this category include ‘a man presenting an official with a vase with three halberds in it’, as in:
[Note 2] The punning rebus ‘ping sheng san ji 平升三级’: Meaning: ‘May you suddenly get three successive promotions’; 图案: 花瓶 + 三戟 Design: hua ping (vase) + san ji (three halberds) Pun: ‘ping’ from ‘hua ping’ cues a pun meaning ‘suddenly ascending’; ‘san ji’, ‘three halberds’, is a pun on ‘three ranks’.
Such images may well puzzle people from a different culture as well as natives without the necessary knowledge. When it was published in an exhibition catalogue, this image was accompanied by the caption: ‘A man offers a dignitary a vase containing three oddly shaped wooden objects’ (p. 84, Seventeenth Century Chinese Porcelain from the Butler Family Collection, Art Services International 1990)
[2.2] Concepts are expressed through an event happening between objects (animals, plants, etc.)
[2.2.1] The event is natural in everyday life
A man is striking (击 ji) a stone chime (qing) = ji qing 击磬, which puns on the concept of ‘good fortune’ (ji qing 吉庆)
[2.2.2] The event is possible in everyday world but is clearly designed to express a particular meaning.
An official’s servant is pointing to (zhi) the sun (ri) = zhi ri 指日, which puns on the expression of ‘very soon.’
[3.0] Ways of Punning
Pun rebuses vary in different levels of similarity between the sound of the signifier and that of the signified.
[3.1] exactly the same sound and tone
Example: 莲 lian2 ‘lotus’ and 连 lian2 ‘continuously’ 笙 sheng1 ‘panpipes’ and 生 sheng1 ‘bear’ 桂 gui4 ‘osmanthus’ and 贵 gui4 ‘precious’ 籽 zi3 ‘seeds’ and 子 zi3 ‘son’ OR 子 zi3 and 子 zi3
[3.2] The same sound but a different tone
Even though normally different tones of a syllable have different semantic significances, i.e. different meanings, the difference may be ignored in many cases of pun rebuses.
Examples: 猫蝶 mao1 die2 ‘cat and butterfly’ and 耄耋 mao4 die2 ‘octogenarian’
鸦柿 ya1 shi4 ‘crow and persimmons’ and 雅士 ya3 shi4 ‘men of refined taste’
[3.3] the same vowel but a different consonant
For example, there is this ancient conflation – oral and written – of yang 羊 (sheep or ram) and xiang 祥 (auspicious), …
Another example is 雀鹿 que lu ‘bird and deer’ and 爵禄 jue lu ‘official position and emolument’
[3.4] the same consonant but a different vowel
[4.0] degree of explicitness in verbal explanation
The interpretation of punning rebuses did not always come easily, even for the contemporaries, a fact testified to in the verbal explanations that sometimes accompany these designs. This necessity to explain the meaning of a punning rebus design suggests that the symbolism used in such images usually could only be understood by an informed minority. In visual communication, as opposed to verbal communication, the principal signifier is an image. However, these images may be accompanied by inscriptions to explicate the meaning signified and pun rebuses may be studied along the parameter of how explicit these verbal inscriptions are in conveying the intended meaning.
[4.1] Both the signified and the signifier are verbally explicit
[4.1.1] same characters but with different meanings, which means they are homonyms and homographs at the same time:
Example: The characters zhi ri 指日 written beside a punning rebus to mean both ‘pointing at the sun’ (signifier) and ‘very soon’ (signified) at the same time.
[4.1.2] different characters with the same sound, which means they are only homophones.
Example: Both ya shi 鸦柿 (crow and persimmon), which serve as the signifier and ya shi tu 雅士图 (the concept of ‘men of refined taste’), which serve as the signified, appear in the painting:
[4.2] Only the signified is verbally explicit
In the following example, the signified meaning is explicitly inscribed 双欢 shuang huan, ‘conjugal bliss’, but there is no verbal form of the signifier, 双獾 shuang huan ‘a picture of two badgers’.
In another example, the signified meaning jue lu爵禄 ‘official position and emolument’ is inscribed but not the names of the signifier 雀鹿 que lu ‘bird and deer’.
[4.3] The signifier and signified are mixed up in the verbal explanation, which was often caused by the illiteracy of the producer and such cases require cautious interpretation.
In the following example, the signifier mao die 猫蝶 (cat and butterfly) is explicitly expressed but not the signified 耄耋 mao die (seventy or eighty years old), resulting in an expression that is literally nonsensical, which cannot possibly be what was really intended - 猫蝶富贵 mao die fu gui ‘cats and butterflies rich and enjoying prestige’. Such a reading, as a matter of fact, would never have occurred under normal viewing circumstances in the mind of an informed audience. It really should have been 耄耋富贵 mao die fu gui, which is ‘May you enjoy wealth and privilege to a ripe old age’.
In the second example presented here, the signifier lian 蓮 (lotus) and the signified sheng gui zi 生貴子 (giving birth to precious sons) are explicitly expressed; their juxtaposition also results in a very odd literal meaning: ‘The lotus gives birth to precious sons’. However, the signifier, the lotus plant in the design, lian 蓮, is actually meant to cue the signified concept ‘continuously’, lian 连, through a homophonous link. Thus, 蓮生貴子 lian sheng gui zi should have been 连生貴子 lian sheng gui zi, ‘May you bear a succession of sons who will bring honour to the family’.
[5.0] ways of deriving the pun signifier
In most cases, the pun signifier directly derives from the image presented in a pun rebus design, as shown by many of the examples mentioned so far. However, there are other, indirect way, which will be numerated below.
[5.1] the pun signifier deriving from radicals in logographs
The Chinese writing system is not composed of an alphabet but consists of thousands and thousands of logographs. Many of these logographs are made up of more than one component, which is known as a radical. This characteristic gives rise to the possibility of designing pun rebuses based on these smaller components rather than the whole logograph.
This mechanism applies to the interpretation of a traditional design with two ducks and reeds and involves further steps probing into the logograph formation of a character. The left half of the Chinese character for ducks 鸭 ya, is the radical jia 甲, which is itself a logography and can mean ‘class’. The two ducks in the painting amounts to two ‘甲’, which is 二甲 er jia, a pun on ‘the second class of civil examination candidates’. Together with the reeds behind the ducks, the visual elements in the painting form a graphical representation of er jia chuan lu 二甲传胪, which means ‘May you be the top of the second class candidates’.
[Note 3] The reeds beside the two ducks, lu wei芦苇, symbolize chuan lu传胪, which is the title of the first candidate in the second class of the successful candidates in the civil service examination.
[5.2] the pun signifier deriving from indirectly related logographs
A picture of two crabs holding a reed can convey the meaning of ‘(May you enter) the second-class of the successful candidates of the imperial examinations’. The second-class category still occupied an enviable position because it contained the top 4th to the 6th among thousand and thousands of candidates. In this category, the logograph which is meant to be cued by the visual signifier does not come directly from the common name of an object. Instead, viewers are required to resort to folklore for the nickname of the presented image. In this case, the image of the crabs is meant to cue a nickname for crabs: 铁甲将军 tie jia jiang jun ‘iron-armoured generals’ because crabs have hard, armour-like shells. Two crabs, then, amount to two 铁甲将军, ‘two iron-armoured generals’. The elements ‘二甲’ er jia taken from this expression thus forms the pun on er jia 二甲, which also mean ‘second class’.
[5.3] the pun signifier deriving from the shape of the presented image
Lychees, logans, and walnuts are all of a circular shape, which is termed as yuan 圆 in Chinese and the Chinese numeral for ‘three’ is san 三. So three round objects can be called san yuan 三元, which puns on the term for the three firsts in the three levels of civil service examinations. Thus, a design of the three round fruits can be used to cue the saying 连中三元 liang zhong san yuan “May you come out top at each level of the triple civil service examinations”.
[6] relationship between the pun signified and the intended message
Often than not, the pun signified constitutes a complete message, such as 连生貴子 lian sheng gui zi, ‘May you bear a succession of sons who will bring honour to the family’. However, sometimes, the pun signified appears only as a fragment of the intended message.
[6.1] the pun signified serves as the initial and cues a complete saying.
Example: A picture of three sheep / goats contains three yang 羊 - 三羊 san yang in Chinese terms, which is a pun on 三阳 san yang - three male elements, or the three solid lines that form the lower half of the 泰 tai hexagram. This pun signified has been traditionally used to cue the complete saying taken from the Yi jing, the Book of Changes: 三阳开泰 san yang kai tai, which means ‘With the return of the yang energy after the long winter, prosperity will come your way.’ In the divinatory system of hexagrams, the 泰 tai hexagram represents the first month of the lunar year. Symbolically, a brand new beginning is ensured by the harmonious yin-yang equilibrium, which appears as half yin and half yang elements in the泰 tai hexagram. This month is the first one after the solstice, which falls in the month represented by the hexagram 坤 kun, consisting of only broken, yin lines.
[6.2] the pun signified serves as one morpheme in the intended message
Example: As mentioned above in Note 3, a picture of reed, which is called 芦 lu in Chinese, can be used to represent the concept of 传胪 chuan lu ‘the first in the second-class of the successful candidates of the imperial examinations’. In such a case, the image of reed serves as a punning cue for the complete expression 传胪 chuan lu.
Pun rebuses figure large in Chinese visual culture, in contemporary as well as imperial China. My present study serves as a starting point for further serious research in this long-neglected field. A linguistic study of this topic can lay a solid foundation for future scholars’ probing into this field from anthropological, sociological, as well as art-historical point of view.