This is how to write the title for "moon" in Chinese, Korean Hanja and Japanese Kanji.
This character is also used to refer to the month. This is because China traditionally uses a lunar calendar, so saying "next moon" is the same as saying "next month" etc. In modern Chinese and Japanese and old Korean, the character for a number is put in front of this moon character to represent western months. So "one moon" is January "two moons" is February etc.
If you are wondering, in the east Asian way to write dates, the character for "sun" or "day" is used with a number in front of it to express the day of the month. So "ten moons, one sun" becomes "October 1st" or "10/1" (this date happens to be Chinese National Day - The equivalent of Independence Day in the USA, Canada Day, or the Queen's Birthday).
These are the characters that literally mean yin and yang in written form (versus the common yin yang symbol). The first character has the element of the moon, while the second character has the element of the sun, so you can see, even in written form, they suggest the balance of opposites (of night and day). You could also translate this title as "sun and moon".
Note: This title is often misspelled as Ying Yang instead of Yin Yang.
This is one of those single characters that is vague, but in that vagueness, in also means many things. This character holds the ideas of ambition, hope, desire, aspiring to, expectations, looking towards, to gaze (into the distance), and in some context full moon rising.
This is a whole word in Chinese and old Korean, but is seldom seen alone in Japanese. Still, it holds the meanings noted above in all three languages.
All of our calligraphy is completely done by hand in the ancient way.
When the calligrapher finishes creating your artwork, it is taken to our art mounting workshop in Beijing where a wall scroll is made by hand from a combination of silk, rice paper, and wood.
After we create your wall scroll, it takes at least two weeks for air mail delivery from Beijing to you.
Therefore, allow a few weeks for delivery from the time you place your order. Rush options are available!
When you select your calligraphy, you'll be taken to another page where you can choose various custom options.
The scroll that I am holding in this picture is a "medium size" 4-character wall scroll. As you can see, it is a great size to hang on your wall. (We also offer custom wall scrolls in larger sizes)
Professional calligraphers are getting to be hard to find these days. Instead of drawing characters by hand, the new generation in China merely type roman letters into their computer keyboards and pick the character that they want from a list that pops up.
There is some fear that true Chinese calligraphy may become a lost art in the coming years. Many art institutes in China are now promoting calligraphy programs in hopes of keeping this unique form
of art alive.
Even with the teachings of a top-ranked calligrapher in China, my calligraphy will never be good enough to sell. I will leave that to the experts.
The same calligrapher who gave me those lessons also
attracted a crowd of thousands and a TV crew as he created characters over
6-feet high. He happens to be ranked as one of the top 100 calligraphers
in all of China. He is also one of very few that would actually attempt
such a feat.
The following table is only helpful for those studying Chinese (or Japanese), and perhaps helps search engines to find this page when someone enters Romanized Chinese or Japanese
Title
Characters
Simplified Traditional
Japanese Romaji (Romanized Japanese)
Various forms of Romanized Chinese
Moon
月 月
tsuki
yuè yue yüeh
yue4 yue
Yin Yang
阴阳 陰陽
in you inyou in yo
yīn yáng yin yang
yin1 yang2 yinyang
April
四月 四月
shi gatsu shigatsu
sì yuè si yue ssu yüeh
si4 yue4 siyue
July
七月 七月
shichigatsu
qī yuè qi yue ch`i yüeh
qi1 yue4 qiyue chiyüeh chi yüeh
Great Expectations
望 望
bou / nozomi bou/nozomi bo / nozomi
wàng wang
wang4 wang
If you have not set up your computer to display Chinese, the characters in this table probably look like empty boxes or random text garbage.
This is why I spent hundreds of hours making images so that you could view the characters in the "moon" listings above.
If you want your Windows computer to be able to display Chinese characters you can either head to your Regional and Language options in your Win XP control panel, select the [Languages] tab and click on [Install files for East Asian Languages]. This task will ask for your Win XP CD to complete in most cases. If you don't have your Windows XP CD, or are running Windows 98, you can also download/run the simplified Chinese font package installer from Microsoft which works independently with Win 98, ME, 2000, and XP. It's a 2.5MB download, so if you are on dial up, start the download and go make a sandwich.
Some people may refer to this entry as Kanji, Characters, in Mandarin Chinese, Characters, in Chinese Writing, in Japanese Writing, in Asian Writing, Ideograms, Chinese symbols, Hieroglyphics, Glyphs, in Chinese Letters, Hanzi, in Japanese Kanji, Pictograms, in the Chinese Written-Language, or in the Japanese Written-Language.
