The colours of Market (The color of Hong Kong?)

Red White Blue

Red for plastic glove, plastic basket
White for polyfoam boxes,
Blue for buckets
Green for all sorts of vegetables
Ginger for ginger, sticky tapes and the owner's cat

The color combination is so familiar to me, since I always follow my mom to the market when I was a child. It seems that the large piece of white, created by polyfoam , only appears in Hong Kong markets.

What do you think when you see this color combination?






Awww, it is the color combo for a little old lady and a pack of six enormous joss sticks, and don't forget a red plastic bag. It is an analogous color combination and very harmony right?

We can tell from the joss sticks that she is a traditional old lady, she wears a red vest is probably for good luck and celebration; and the black long sleeve T-shirt and pants can stand stains and looks tidy even it gets dirty.

Yellow

I like the yellow luggage.

It belongs to the western lady on the left, by looking at her trousers, every can tell that she really like yellow.

What are the meanings that yellow conveys in this picture? Maybe it means joy, happiness, optimism, idealism, imagination, hope, sunshine, summer, gold, philosophy blah, blah, blah... to the lady; but definitely means caution when yellow appears at the door edge.

However, when I was a child, people keep telling me that yellow looks dump, you look like a banana, if you wear yellow; so I thought I didn't like yellow too. But actually I do like yellow and I am not afraid to admit this now. Why bother about what other people think? To me yellow means happiness and looks smart!

Color Theory on Cats

Fat cat in monochromatic fur, lies on a carton box of apple, looks vacuous, except his belly.

Monochromatic color scheme gives a subtle look, but since it look smart and beautiful, people are willing to give it food and the most evil thing is there are a lot of delis around in the market.

It makes me realize that there seems no fat black cat, why? Is that black cat is not cute enough? Is that they look inauspicious? Is that black cats are genetically weight less?

Snap shot

Hong Kong people, where are the colors?
Many of us love to dress in achromatic scheme, especially black: to look cool, to look authority, to look slim, to keep a distance from the crowd, but don't they realize that all black is equal to boredom? Both pictures are taken on the MTR platforms, left one at Tseung Kwan O, right one at Lai King. Although their social background, occupation, income level, age etc. vary, they all wear achromatic clothes. Such an interesting phenomenon! Would it be the side effect of the recent economic crises? Would it be they are not happy about their job? So, they choose black due to unhappiness and living pressure?

A Filipino lady wore a colorful printed blouse. High saturation, high chrome primary colors. It is in their culture to wear colorful floral prints, but actually nowadays we seldom see the Filipinos wear colorful clothing, may be just like Chinese seldom wear Qipao in daily life.

Photo taken at the Kowloon Park, in front of the big bird cage: a family with two elderly, a Westerner male and a Chinese Female. Their choice of color is quite simple: pink, green and achromatic, not obscure at all. So, I guest they might come from working class family, or at least, not highly educated.

Another family in front of the bird cage baby, granny, and mom and Filipino maid. Again, their choice of colors: red, blue, achromatic are simple colors, reflects that they are not come the highly educated class.


Pink and light blue are for toddlers. Since the two colors conveys the meaning of love, romance, softness, delicacy; peace, tranquility, quiet, clean, soft and pure etc. which are the stereotypes and hopes of adult to children.
The teachers are in orange polo shirt which represent ambition, fun, happy, energetic, balance, warmth, enthusiasm, generosity, vibrant ... i.e. the essential qualities of kinder garden teachers.
Well. Don't you think that the colors of the uniforms are too cutesy?

Grey symbolically represents security, reliability, intelligence, staid, modesty, dignity, maturity, solid, conservative, practical, old age, sadness, boring. Here I would use staid, conservative, practical, old age and boring to describe the man. Apologize if I am wrong, but because his look misled me.

Form the colorful young lovers we can find the age difference between adults and youngsters. In the above pictures you can see adults usually prefers subdues colors, while youngsters prefer brighter and solid colors.

On the left and right are Westerners, the one in the middle is a Hong Kong guy. It shows that color preference could be more of personal preference rather than age, cultural or gender influence.