Feng Huang
The Asian Phoenix
The Asian Phoenix
This project was done for a photographer who wanted something "light" & "airy" to describe her particular style. After much research, I came across Feng Huang which is the Asian Phoenix. Feng Huang first appeared to the Chinese emperor Hung Ti around 2600 BCE. Like the ki-lin, the Chinese unicorn, Feng Huang only appears in times of peace and prosperity, usually when a new benign emperor ascends the throne. It is one of the four celestial creatures that the Chinese believed created the world (the other three being the dragon, the unicorn and the tortoise). After the creation of the world, the heavens were divided into four quadrants, one for each creature: north, south, east and west; and Feng Huang ruled over the southern quadrant of heaven, which represented summer, and hence the sun. Feng Huang is also called the emperor of birds because all the other birds of the sky would follow it in flight in homage to it. Unlike the Phoenix of Western mythology, Feng Huang is in fact TWO birds. Many Chinese names for a creature are the combination of the male name and female name. Feng is the male bird and Huang is the female bird. The male is the yang and represents the solar cycle and summer, while the female is the yin, the lunar cycle, and a symbol of the Chinese empress. My challenge was to represent the bird in a feminine way and to express it in such a manner which was appropos to the femininity of the client.
