Yuan Xiao

What is your sky-blue colour? How the colours are named in your language? In Japanese, they name blue colours as ‘sky blue’ — sora (空), or as ‘water’ — mizu (水). Like Latin and other ancient languages, Japanese took the inspiration from the natural environment that surrounded them or materials they used in daily life; the ingredients and techniques used in the dye industry; or the family names that are associated with the discovery of certain colours. But what differentiates colour nomenclature in Japanese from other languages is perhaps that they are a derivation from Buddhist philosophy.

As I researched traditional colour nomenclature in Japanese (日本の伝統色), I looked into memories from childhood and tried to understand how they linked the colour names in Japanese, as well as how colour nomenclature affects me in terms of perceiving, feeling, and describing colours in my writing practice. However, as Derek Jarman once said, ‘I know that my colours are not yours. Two colours are never the same, even if they’re from the same tube. Context changes the way we perceive them’. Therefore, beyond my personal story, this research and writing intends to encourage readers to think of the relationship between colours and language as a cultural phenomenon for society as a whole, and also to reflect them as an individual experience.

This essay elaborates on this through a presentation of the colours of red, yellow, green, blue, black, and white. In each chapter, readers will be guided through a journey to understand not only Japanese traditional colour nomenclature (日本の伝統色), but also Japanese culture, via literature, poetry, and personal memories.

From 20 May 1949 to 15 July 1987, under Chiang Kai-shek's government, Taiwan was in its Martial Law and White Terror period. During this time, Taiwan had very strict rules on publications and news reports，and also allowed the trial of civilians by military courts on charges of sedition. Newspapers were used for propaganda: "At the beginning of the Martial Law era, they could not exceed six pages. The number was increased to eight pages in 1958, 10 in 1967 and 12 in 1974. There were only 31 newspapers, 15 of which were owned by either the government or the military." “They (the government) put a lot of effort to control people's thinking, people's reading," said Michael Hsiao, a sociology professor at Academia Sinica and policy adviser to the former president of Taiwan, Chen Shui-bian.

In 2019, on the 40th anniversary of the Formosa Magazine publication, I looked back on how Formosa Magazine was created, organised, and then formed as a political party — the Democratic Progressive Party — under the extreme political regime of 1970s Taiwan. Through the interviews I have with the two founding members of the magazine, Shi Ming-teh and Linda Arrigo, from which the publication history is not only told and recorded, this writing also questions what the role of the publication can be in social movements, especially in our critical contemporary climate.

NOIT— 5: bodies as in buildings is written and produced by the MA Writing students. This issue focus on how bodies and buildings can be constructed and experienced, with historic specificity and as imagined. Welcome to the Broadcasting Show responded to these themes. Writing from personal experience, I reflected on how my body and emotions were constantly changing in the fast-paced newsroom, and questioned the core value of the broadcasting houses: how can the hub of the news production provide for their audience, and also for their employees. Through this writing, a further question was raised: what can we — both news organisations and members of the audience — do to build the trust between each other?

‘Standing in the middle of the road, for a second or two, I’m confused which traffic direction I should look towards. Right or Left? Habit tells me cars are coming from my left-hand side, but the traffic rules of the city I currently live in tells me the way is opposite. Getting rid of an old habit and adapting to a new one is harder than I thought.’

This short piece contains three stories of me on crossings in three different cities, from which life scenes of each city are also shown through the moment of 'Attention'.

Attention Anthology was produced collaboratively by students from the MA Writing Programme at the Royal College of Art.

Published by: Royal College of Art