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Chief director Chen Xiaoqing speaks at the premiere.

1. A piece of luodian (mother-of-pearl inlay) handiwork featured in the documentary China in Hues.

2. Ink sticks produced in Anhui province.

3. Artisans in Zhejiang province examine the color and luster of celadon pieces.

4. A close-up shot of a celadon vase.

5. Hong Kong calligrapher Fung Siu-wah (center) poses with his work.

6. The documentary's production team explores the making of thangka in Gansu province.

7. A woodblock New Year picture made in Henan province.

Various appetizing shades of brown such as chocolate, chestnut and caramel — the Maillard color palette — have swept the global fashion scene since autumn 2023. Inspired by the series of chemical reactions discovered by French chemist Louis-Camille Maillard (1878-1936) that impart a rich brown hue to food while cooking — the process of searing a steak, for example — these earthy tones evoke a sense of nature, comfort and elegance.

This year, Pantone, a world front-runner in color design, has named Mocha Mousse as its Color of the Year, adding to the brownish color scheme another hint of warm, mellow vibe.

Fashion is a circle — what fades away comes back around. On the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in western China, dubbed "the roof of the world" for its high altitude, Tibetan women have applied an ocher-colored sunscreen makeup for more than a millennium. It even became a trend among noble women in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) capital of Chang'an, present-day Xi'an in Shaanxi province.

Amid the Maillard-style craze, this traditional practice has once again been brought into the limelight, as a recent documentary, China in Hues, captures this time-honored magic that turns milk into a brownish cream blush, demonstrating joy and creativity, as well as an eternal pursuit of beauty.

At Palgon county, Nagchu city of the Xizang autonomous region, the production team recorded how young Tibetan woman Padma Dekyi — living at an altitude of around 5,000 meters under the scorching sun — makes this sunblock blush using traditional techniques.

After extracting butter and cheese curds from fresh milk, she continues to boil the residue for four hours until the liquid transforms into a sticky, ocher-colored paste.

In front of the camera, Padma Dekyi shares her creation with friends. Some delicately dot blush drops on their faces in patterns they design themselves, while others simply blend the cream smoothly across their foreheads and cheeks.

"The world of a shepherdess was limited in the past. I wonder if this color brings them the joy of creating, making them into a slightly different version of themselves," chief director Chen Xiaoqing narrates in the documentary.

Symbolic shades

China in Hues is a six-episode documentary that recently streamed on Tencent Video. It explores traditional Chinese ideas to identify colors, their application in traditional craftsmanship and the traditional methods employed to achieve these hues from natural ingredients.

Led by Chen, who is known for his culinary documentary series such as A Bite of China and Once Upon a Bite, the production team treats the audience with a visual feast woven through concise yet vivid storytelling, just like the above-mentioned young women's earthy-toned gathering on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

"Color, much like delicacies, serves as a medium for understanding China and its traditional culture," says Qu Nan, one of the documentary's producers.

Compared to Chen's earlier works that tantalize the taste buds, China in Hues aims to refresh the audiences' visual observation of the world with a more nuanced perspective, she adds.

In Qu's point of view, the documentary deals with the diverse manifestations of color traditions in Chinese culture. The first episode discusses how the colors symbolizing feudal power in ancient societies — qing (azure), vermilion, imperial yellow, pure white and xuan (a profound black hue) — along with the exquisite craftsmanship that fully presents their charm, have transitioned into ordinary modern life.

A vivid example can be found in the numerous shop signs with bold scarlet calligraphy lining the streets of Hong Kong, attracting business while carrying people's aspirations for fortune and prosperity. This unveils a widespread dimension of Chinese cultural implications hidden behind red.

Many of these signs are brushed by calligrapher Fung Siu-wah, also known by his pen name Wah Gor, who wrote the title for China in Hues.

Subsequent episodes of the documentary examine how the Chinese portray deities and celestial realms; women's self-expression through a kaleidoscopic palette; the graceful hues favored by literati; and the robust tones of farming life.

In the final episode, however, the production team shifts its lens to focus on some "unusual" hues that took strength and wisdom to obtain with traditional techniques — purple, for example.

Elderly ethnic Va women in rural Yunnan province apply purple dye made from shellac, a material once commonly used in manufacturing records and chewing gum. In Kaifeng's Zhuxian town, Henan province, a woodblock New Year picture artisan surnamed Zhang insists on keeping secret the mysterious techniques he claims to have developed after experimenting more than 1,000 times to produce delicate purple hues in his woodblock printing.

Historically, the Chinese developed quite a literary system to name and recognize colors, drawing inspiration from daily life, such as "lard white", "pot-bottom black", "furnace-fire azure" and "goose-down yellow", which adds to the color a fluffy texture.

"These names reflect ancient people's intuitive understanding of the world," says Guo An, executive chief director of the documentary.

Modern people's knowledge of color is largely shaped by RGB or Pantone color systems that define colors with numbers. "To some extent, we've lost the subtle synesthesia of color. We want to awaken the audience's awareness for a richer appreciation of what they see, as indicated by color names."

Pursuit of beauty

A widespread joke, "multilayered black", is anything but absurd.

Guo notes that the Kangxi Dictionary, an official lexicon commissioned by Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), contains over 170 expressions for black hues, even more than terms describing different shades of red. Among the 12 oracle bone characters deciphered that describe colors, six represent black hues and three red.

"In lacquerware, black is used to temper the exuberance of red, unveiling a muted elegance with an understated sheen. This hue mirrors the hours during the transition between day and night, where darkness bleeds into crimson. We Chinese call it xuan," Chen narrates in the first episode.

Chen says color is both physiological and psychological, influenced by personal preferences and society's collective pursuits, thereby conveying the cultural landscape of a particular region.

On the other hand, they've observed the imprints of cultural exchanges in the spread of color traditions. During the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24), safflower was introduced to the Central China Plains from Xiyu (the Western Regions), which encompasses today's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and parts of Central Asia.

The tradition of dyeing with safflower subsequently spread to other parts of East Asia along with Chinese costume culture, Chen adds.

In the documentary, the production team particularly pays attention to capture close-up shots of the acquisition and application of colors in traditional crafts such as porcelain-making, liuli (colored glaze) and the production of pine-soot ink sticks.

Sometimes they apply microphotography, a technique frequently used in their previous culinary documentary series, and incorporate cartoons to provide background knowledge of the colors.

Guo explains that while filming food requires capturing the most eye-catching moments of the dish, the challenge of presenting traditional colors lies in placing them in environments that highlight their subtle interactions with light and background.

He adds that with years of experience, the team has accumulated a wealth of tools and techniques to tackle this challenge efficiently.

According to Qu, the documentary has been launched on WeTV, the overseas version of Tencent Video, with English subtitles, and they're seeking distribution in Southeast Asia.

A further two seasons of China in Hues are scheduled, which will be focusing more on storytelling relevant to modern life, she adds.

Contact the writer at fangaiqing@chinadaily.com.cn