Bindis in Chinese art and culture

[sanchuan]

Going through an old family box over Christmas, I happened upon this pair of china figurines and I was wondering if anyone could help me find out who or what they are supposed to represent. 

 

It's a male and a female, wearing a kind of bindi or 红点 on their forehead. The underside simply says "中国制造 MADE IN CHINA" in red ink.

 

I'm aware that Chinese children entering school for the first time used to be drawn a red dot (痣) in the 眉心 space between their eyes as an auspicious mark for wisdom (the homophonous 智). I don't know the name of this practice or indeed whether it's still in use.

 

Could these figurines simply be depicting two recumbent children of primary school age? Why? Are they supposed to be used as lucky charms for a big and happy family, perhaps? What's the big hole underneath for? 

 

Would love it if anyone could shed some light on any of the above. Thanks for your input!

[TheBigZaboon]

I would guess from what occurs in other cultures in North Asia that they are what the Japanese call 箸置き(hashi-oki). They are "chopstick holders". The little boy and girl are lying on their bellies, and the business end of your chopsticks rest on their backs, while the end you grasp with your hands rests on the table. As far as I know, they just represent Chinese children (thus cute) for all the cultures connected to China, without any other significance.

 

I'm willing to be proved wrong, though...

 

TBZ

[sanchuan]

I like this hypothesis very much! Why didn't it even occur to me? Context, I guess. But, yes, the arch of their back would lend itself very well to that kind of use. 

 

If that's what they're for, I can't help wondering if etiquette demands they face your fellow diners or instead be placed so that each diner is given (direct & 吉祥痣-ful) face. Probably the latter, though I can kinda see both arguments there.

 

The hole at the bottom, common to so much chinaware, must have some kind of structural reason to be there, or so I reckon...

[sanchuan]

筷架 can also work as lucky charms, apparently.

 

Turns out they're often used as gifts to wish unmarried women to 快嫁 already.

Edited January 17, 2023 at 07:36 PM by sanchuan
Poor phrasing - I took out a couple needless words to avoid equivocation

[TheBigZaboon]

They're dinner ware, man, dinner ware... That's really all they are. We have a whole drawer full of them at home. Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donnie Trump... You choose them for the occasion: kids' parties, my wife's friends over for lunch... You name it...

Some come without holes and are just solid lumps of crockery. I was just trying to be polite and take the edge off of my answer, but there's no oriental mystery, no fancy customs wishing wedded bliss to lonely girls, nuthin'!!! They're just to keep the business end of your chopsticks from staining the table cloth...

 

Sorry...

 

TBZ

[sanchuan]

Yeah, no, I got what they are. I just couldn't immediately recognise the item, hence my question (which I never thought could warrant a non-polite answer, so thank you for your restraint so far).

 

The 筷架-快架 connection was just a funny little tidbit I read about 筷架, in general. Nowhere do I imply these or any other set of chinaware hold any kind of "oriental mystery"... All I shared was from plain old 百度百科.

 

Back to the question of the post, if anyone has any clue as to what sort of characters a pair of children so depicted might represent, that'd be great to know. I do agree they're likely drawn at random and just meant to look cute - I cannot spot any particular identifier from any Chinese fiction or fairy tale that I know of. But someone else might.

[Guest realmayo]

I actually misread the first line of your previous post to say that these items were lucky charms and not necessarily for chopsticks.

 

I believe the holes in the bottom are to avoid ceramics exploding in the kiln, which is a risk for hollow items if there's no escape route for the expanding air inside.

[sanchuan]

Good catch, thanks @realmayo - edited now. Sorry for the confusion.

 

I think you're right on the money about those holes. 

[sanchuan]

Not much seems immediately available with regards to the practice of drawing bindi dots (点红点) on children's foreheads in China. 

 

I've only gathered that people variously refer to it as 红点, 眉心点, 眉心红, 开天眼, 红脑门 as well as, in translation from Hindi, 第三只眼, 第三眼气轮 and 智慧之眼.

 

It seems to go back to the practice of pressing cinnabar on children's 眉心 to mark the opening of their third/wisdom eye as part of the 开笔礼, the day when they first learn to hold a brush to write.

 

You can find people online posting and reminiscing about their 眉心红照片 from their early years in school. The dot was worn in official photographs and during school cultural events, and it was mostly just applied with lipstick. Anecdotally, it seems to have been prevalent in the 80s, and perhaps less so in the 90s.

 

That still leaves me none the wiser as to 

1. whether it's still the done thing in school (perhaps members with children in China can confirm one way or the other);

2. how far back this practice goes; and

3. when it started appearing in Chinese iconography (figurines, drawings, etc).

 

Surely there's a doctoral thesis on this very topic tucked away somewhere... ?

 

[TheBigZaboon]

I'm sorry... I got a bit carried away over some of the phrasing involved. There's no "hypothesis" here. These pieces are dinner ware, crockery... Plain and simple. They are what I told you they are, and not something else.

 

And I don't think there's much use in over-theorizing about the little dots on their foreheads, either. You've done an exceptional job in identifying what they are, both in purpose and terminology. And they go farther back into Chinese history than the modern era, at least to the nineteenth century. But Europeans, white folks, are not the only ones guilty of cultural stereo typing. These two images of cute little Chinese children lend themselves to billboards and party decorations all over Asia, for any purposes even remotely involving Chinese. Even by Chinese themselves!!!

 

Anyway, I apologize for seeming to be cranky. I wrote my answer in the middle of the night when I should have been sleeping.

 

TBZ

[sanchuan]

@TheBigZaboon That's alright. Those figurines carried distinctly non-culinary associations for me from childhood, so I was totally thrown off. Total cognitive blindness there. Using the word 'hypothesis' might have been a bit obtuse at that point but wasn't meant to say I didn't believe you. I just couldn't believe I hadn't recognised the shape myself, and very much appreciated the heads-up.

 

On 1/17/2023 at 11:28 PM, TheBigZaboon said:

I don't think there's much use in over-theorizing

 

None at all! That's the fun of it.

 

On 1/17/2023 at 11:28 PM, TheBigZaboon said:

white folks, are not the only ones guilty of cultural stereo typing

I almost daren't say it but it totally smacks of cultural appropriation, doesn't it. Thing is, the red dot has been featured in indigenous folklore imagery for literal ages, from 观音 down, so you can't say it's not a legitimate part of Chinese culture.

 

Anyway, yes, I do believe it's good fun to see how much a dot on a figurine can end up teaching us about the Hindu/Buddhist iconographic creep into Confucian school rituals! Certainly marks a change from comparing learnt word counts... 

 

 

[Guest realmayo]

I sometimes think PRC-China is increasingly culturally-appropriating from pre-PRC-China....

[TheBigZaboon]

China has a vast, vast entertainment industry turning out thousands of hours of historical dramas every year. I'm far from able to recognize the period or dynasty from the costumes as a Chinese person could, but Instagram has threads devoted to stunningly beautiful actresses in period dramas like Yang Mi and Diliraba (who's actually a Uigher, I believe). You will see them with various forms of markings between their beautifully manicured eyebrows that tell a real aficionado which historical period is featured in the drama at issue. The markings all seem to be uniformly red, but differ in complexity, from a simple red dot (binti-style) to a mini-tattoo, presumably giving a clue identifying the period. I always assumed that it's the hairstyle that the boys display that gives another hint, as the costumes all seem somewhat the same.

 

TBZ

[sanchuan]

Yet another case of a foreign item that was thoroughly Sinicised... Worth nothing that, unlike the 红点 on children, stylised between-the-eyes markings have always been an exclusively female preserve (as far as I can infer - if anyone knows of similar markings used among, say, male martian artists, whether of yore or lore, I'll stand corrected). Not being proper "red dots", they presumably take on a different name in Chinese, maybe 眉心化妆 or something even less evocative of things foreign/religious.

 

The pervasive sort of China-on-China cultural appropriation we see nowadays, both in the figurative arts and popular literature (including TV and cinema), only serves to blur and sinicise narratives further.  A recent article, by one Zhiyi Yang, made a good case for calling it "Sinophone Classicism" (open access). It makes a lot of sense and we should perhaps consider using that term instead. 

[TheBigZaboon]

Speaking of martian artists, there's someone in the States (United) decrying the male white supremacy predominant in astronomy today, presumably because of the predominance of little green men, and total absence of representation of, for example, Pacific islanders in the field...

 

TBZ

[Guest realmayo]

On 1/18/2023 at 10:49 AM, sanchuan said:

Siniphone Classicism

More interesting essay than I expected, although seems a bit daft to dismiss the entire notion of 'authenticity' just because it's inconvenient.

I do think there's a contradition with China in particular: on the one hand it makes up stuff around being the only country with 5000+ years of history, on the other hand its contemporary culture (political, economic, musical, film, architectural, clothing etc) is so very western.

 

Speaking of western, I was wondering how this "pastiche" or "parody" or "cosplaying" of the past compares to e.g. the Westerns (movies) that were popular in the US, or maybe the history plays that were popular in Shakespeare's time. Seems to me that 1950s USA or Elizabethan England were telling stories about themselves (true or otherwise). That the US was forged from rugged individualism. Or that the Tudors are rightful rulers of England. But for China I don't know what the story is. It can't be 'we used to have our own cultural traditions until our leaders tried to destroy them all post-1949', can it?

[Moshen]

Quote

But for China I don't know what the story is.

 

The one I hear all the time is "China has a long, long history."  And as a corollary, "the US is just a baby nation" (ie has a short history).

[sanchuan]

True. For a nation-building narrative, China's classicism is almost seditiously uninterested in the PRC story. 

 

...Then again, just calling it all "traditional" and "Chinese" is nation-building enough, considering how ambitious an ask that really is if you look hard enough (see binti talk upthread). Prefixing everything with 中国 is a very small but very enforceable story-telling exercise in and of itself. 

 

A propos of nothing, I find the words Sinophone and Sinitic very beautiful indeed. 

[Guest realmayo]

On 1/18/2023 at 4:08 PM, Moshen said:

The one I hear all the time is "China has a long, long history."

 

Almost as old as the CCP.

 

On 1/18/2023 at 6:30 PM, sanchuan said:

the words Sinophone and Sinitic

 

I agree with you about Sinitic, sounds crisp but exotic simultaneously.

[sanchuan]

On 1/18/2023 at 7:30 PM, sanchuan said:

just calling it all "traditional" and "Chinese" is nation-building enough, considering how ambitious an ask that really is if you look hard enough

興國學生在星加坡發癲，到處破壞海報，將 "Lunar" 改成 "Chinese"