Semiotic stratification of pine-cypress: from arboreal totems to confucian ethics

2.2.1 The character mu (木) stands among the most ancient pictographs

The character mu (木) stands among the most ancient pictographs (depicted in Figure 3). As explicated in Shuowen Jiezi: “It signifies ‘emerging,’ sprouting from the earth, associated with eastern directions. Its form derives from cao [屮 sprout], with upper strokes resembling branches and lower strokes roots” (Xu 1981: 238). This primordial pictograph – visually encoding arboreal morphology through branch-like upper strokes and root-simulating lower components – epitomizes the logographic embodiment of vegetative vitality.

Figure 3:

The origin and evolution of the Chinese character “木” (mù ‘tree/wood’) (Li and Ping’an 2013: 490).

Evolving from oracle-bone script to seal script standardization, the mu-radical logographic cluster constituted China’s earliest semiotic network for thanatological symbolism. As demonstrated through morphological analysis and functional classification (Table 2), mu-derived graphs performed critical semiotic functions in mortuary contexts: materially indexing coffin timbers (棺/椁), ritually mediating ancestral communication (柩), and existentially signifying life–death regeneration (墓).

However, to emerge from this vast semantic network and become the quintessential hypericon in funerary culture, the pine–cypress symbol required a more specific set of conditions. The interplay between unique biological properties of these trees (cold resistance, evergreen nature, biopreservative quality) and the archaic cosmological beliefs inherent in the mu radical (e.g., the “communicative” semantics embodied by Jianmu [建木] as a celestial ladder) provided a dual foundation for their semiotic specialization and elevation.

A Saussurean structuralist perspective provides the first analytical tool for this inquiry: the value of the mu radical is defined by its differential relationship with other semantic classifiers (e.g., 艹 cao for grass, 土 tu for earth). This positional value within the linguistic system allowed mu to become the hyperobject anchoring this thanatological network. Furthermore, a Peircean lens offers a valuable framework for dissecting the internal mechanics of this network. Take the character jiù (柩 ‘bier’) as an example: its materiality (wooden, as the Representamen) comes into physical contact with the object (the corpse), generating an Interpretant – the concept of a sacred vessel facilitating the soul’s transition.

It was through this conceptual infrastructure provided by the mu-radical logographic system that the biopreservative properties (material durability) and mytho-cosmic attributes (celestial mediation) of the pine–cypress symbol were semiotically transfigured into a dual mediating function. They served simultaneously as a material carrier for corporeal immortality (manifested in coffin/chamber structures) and a ritual conduit for soul transcendence. This perfect integration of pragmatic materiality with spiritual belief ultimately crystallized pine–cypress as the most representative hypericons in Chinese funerary semiotics.

2.2.2 Semiotic codification of oracle-bone divination and mortuary rituals

The oracle-bone inscriptions featuring the mu (木) radical excavated at Yinxu (安阳殷墟) demonstrate a dual-coding mechanism where pyro-scapulimantic cracks interact with logographic signs to integrate pines and cypresses as symbols into proto-thanatological semiotic systems. Crucially, the spatial juxtaposition of mu (木, arboreal sign) and si (死, death graph) establishes a “wood→death” visual syntax. As exemplified in Heji 32,226 (《合集》32,226): “[Crack-making on] Yiyou day: Should we perform the you ritual for Father Jia, utilizing ce mu [爿木; interpreted as sectioned timber for ritual beds]?” (Guo and Hu 1978: 2,145). Li and Ping’an (2013: 139) point out that in some Chinese dialects, split bamboo or wood is called pan (爿), and that this character is identical in form to the original clerical script for chuang (床 ‘bed’) – revealing how Shang ritual technology semiotically transfigured arboreal materiality into sacred media for necromantic prognostication. The semiotic mechanism of chuang mu ‘bed-wood’ as the direct intersection of ‘wood’ and ‘corpse’ (尸) is metonymic: through physical contact and bearing, the wood becomes “contaminated” with death and sacred attributes. This laid the earliest, functionally material foundation for the subsequent leap of pines and cypresses from “practical timber” (utilizing their decay resistance for coffins) to “moral symbol.”

By the Warring States period, Liji (Book of rites) formalized this semiotic evolution through prescriptive codification, reifying timber selection into sociopolitical indexicality: “outer coffins [guo] use cypress, inner coffins [guan] use pine” (Hu and Zhang 2017: 1,192). Through such ritual-textual institutionalization, pine and cypress transcended natural ecology to become corporealized semaphores of Confucian ethical hierarchy – their arboreal essence re-encoded as logocentric embodiments of li (礼 ‘ritual propriety’). This institutional recoding, mediated through bamboo-silk manuscript cultures, operationalized vegetal properties (durability, fragrance) as multisensory signifiers of moral permanence.

2.2.3 Phonosemantic corroboration in the pine–ode ethical metonymic shift​

Semiotic analysis necessitates examining not only the relationship between phonetic elements and individual signifiers but also the systemic interplay among sign clusters and their holistic cultural codification (Chen 2022). The homophonic linkage between song (松 ‘pine’) and song (讼 ‘litigation’) reveals a critical metonymic shift. As Shuowen Jiezi (Xu 1981: 100) notes, “song (讼) denotes contention (zheng 争),” inherently evoking struggles against temporal finitude – a concept echoed in modern idioms like “racing against time” (争分夺秒). This phonosemantic corroboration positions pine, as coffin material, within a liminal semiotic role mediating human–divine communication.

Concurrently, the homophonic bond between song (松 ‘pine’) and song (颂 ‘ode’) – exemplified by the Classic of poetry’s “Lofty hymns for rituals” (吉甫作颂,其诗孔硕, Liu and Qi 2011: 775), establishes semiotic isomorphism between arboreal symbols and Confucian eulogistic practices, as epitomized by the typical Han Dynasty tomb inscription motif of “pines and cypresses extolling virtue” (松柏颂德). Such acoustic-semantic intertextuality, rooted in ancient Chinese xiesheng (谐声 ‘sound-loan’) traditions, underscores the functional metamorphosis of pine and cypress: from the Shang–Zhou shamanic axis mundi (e.g., Sanxingdui bronze trees) to Qin–Han Confucian emblems of moral perpetuity. As Cheng Yi articulates in The surviving works of the Cheng brothers (《二程遗书》): “pines and cypress maintain constancy, unchanging across seasons; thus sages emulate them” (Cheng and Cheng 2004: 236). This trajectory not only marks the symbols’ transition from ritual implements to ethical personae but also exemplifies how natural elements were semiotically re-engineered to bear layered sociophilosophical values, thereby expanding their signifying potency.

2.3.1 The disciplinary codification of pine–cypress by textual authority

The institutionalization of social hierarchy stands as a pivotal manifestation of pine–cypress symbolism’s ritual-canonical codification. As documented in Zhouli·Chunguan·Zhongren:

The tomb officers delineate royal burial grounds, mapping their sacred precincts […] determining mound dimensions and tree quantities according to noble ranks (Sun 1987: 1,652).

This evidences the formal integration of arboreal funerary semiotics into the state-sanctioned ritual coding system. Spatial hierarchy was materially enacted through differential tree allocations, exemplified by Baihutongyi·Beng Hong:

The Son of Heaven’s mound measures three ren [18 ft], planted with pines; feudal lords’ mounds half that height with cypresses; ministers’ mounds eight chi [6 ft] with Luan trees; scholars’ mounds four chi with pagodas (Gu Ban 1994: 559).

Such prescriptions established a direct correspondence between posthumous rank and ecospatial configuration. Material politics further manifested itself in coffin timber regulations. Liji·Sangdaji stipulates:

Feudal lords use pine outer coffins [guo], ministers cypress, and scholars mixed woods. (Kong 2008: 1,234).

Baihutongyi·Beng Hong elaborates:

The Son of Heaven’s cypress guo stabilizes cosmic alignment; feudal lords’ pine guo signifies loyalty; ministers’ cypress guo connects to earthly forces; scholars’ mixed woods merely suffice (Gu Ban 1994: 562).

Here, timber selection transforms into a material semiotics of ethical status. The profound entrenchment of this institutional codification is vividly captured in the social practices of the Eastern Han (25–220 CE), as critiqued by the philosopher Wang Fu. In his Comments of a recluse · On extravagance (Qian Fu Lun · Fu Chi), he states:

[…] the noble relatives in the capital and the powerful families in the commanderies […] spare no expense in death[, …] raise massive burial mounds, extensively plant pines and cypresses, and build cottages and ancestral temples, in lavish usurpation of rites (Wang 2020: 58)

These socio-institutional norms were far from mere technical specifications; they represented the microscopic embodiment of Foucauldian disciplinary power within funerary space. Through ritual texts, power executed meticulous classification and distribution of natural materials, forcibly incorporating pines, cypresses, luan, and pagoda trees into a politico-moral semiotic sequence. Herein, “which trees to plant” and “which timber to use” became signifiers identifying the social status of the deceased, underpinned by an immutable hierarchical order. This constitutes what Bourdieu termed “symbolic violence” (Bourdieu 1977) – power cloaking its own logic in the garments of naturalness and legitimacy (“cypress heart symbolizes virtue,” “pine signifies loyalty”), thereby enabling social hierarchy to become embodied and naturalized through the use of natural objects. Consequently, the essence of tertiary encoding lies in the appropriation and reconfiguration of symbols by power through institutional texts.

2.3.2 Pine-cypress symbolism as spatiotemporal metonymy for moral values in Han mortuary iconography

The core of institutional encoding lies in the disciplinary power that codifies and classifies symbols through canonical texts. However, the efficacy of this encoding ultimately relies on its consolidation through material social practices. A complete analysis of institutional encoding must, therefore, move beyond textual statutes to examine how it is materialized into spatial order and visual programs. The illustrated stone relief panel (Figure 4), excavated from the Han dynasty sarcophagus at Weishan Island’s Gounan Village, Shandong Province, constitutes China’s earliest archaeologically attested representation integrating mortuary practice with coniferous symbolism. Categorized as mausoleum pine–cypress iconography, this pictorial program demonstrates how cultural symbols are enshrined within the norms of social customs and institutional codification.

Figure 4:

Funerary iconography on Han dynasty stone sarcophagi (Wu 2005).

The relief artistically reconstructs a complete Han funeral procession: mourners first pay ritual condolences, then escort the funerary carriage to the tomb complex. The tombscape’s spatial configuration proves particularly semiotically charged, featuring three burial mounds that suggest either a familial or communal necropolis. The vacant plot likely represents a newly excavated burial site, surrounded by kneeling and standing mourners. Significantly, the artificial plantation surrounding older mounds displays coniferous trees with conical crowns, morphologically identifiable as Pinus and Cupressus species. The phytographic realism of these images materially substantiates that planting pines and cypresses in front of tombs had become an important institutionalized practice in the Han dynasty.

This stone relief can be viewed as a spatial translation of the disciplinary norms recorded in texts such as the Zhouli and the Baihutongyi. The coniferous trees with conical crowns planted in the tomb area directly correspond to the hierarchical regulations documented in ancient literature, publicly displaying the social status of the deceased in a visual form. More importantly, the entire scene – including the three burial mounds suggesting a familial necropolis, the newly dug grave, and the mourners positioned according to kinship proximity – constitutes a miniature disciplinary space. Within this space, the social hierarchy prescribed by institutions is precisely mapped onto a physical layout.

The social phenomenon of planting cypresses before tombs in Han dynasty stone reliefs demonstrates that pines and cypresses had become conventionalized symbols (Luo 2025) stably adopted by communities in the Han dynasty. Herein, the pine–cypress symbol performs a function of spatiotemporal metonymy. Vertically, the cypress (celestial access), burial mounds (human realm), and root systems (underworld) construct a cosmographic model inheriting from the bronze sacred trees, thereby legitimizing the imperial hierarchical order as an eternal cosmic order. Horizontally, the concentric funeral processions around the tomb cypresses topologize Confucian kinship ethics (e.g., filial piety), transforming social norms into visible and perceptible spatial relationships.

On a visuo-metaphorical level, the cypress’s conical canopy mimicking Han ritual headwear exemplifies symbolic violence: it disguises socially assigned status as a “natural” and perpetual attribute, akin to botanical form. Unlike the relatively static motifs in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings, the Han relief employs narrative scenes to intertwine the arboreal growth (e.g., annual rings) with the continuity of familial ethics, creating a dynamic, organic-institutional semiosis. This process made the social hierarchy appear self-evident and immutable.

Consequently, this Han stone relief is not merely a record of custom but the material endpoint of institutional encoding’s operation. It vividly reveals how power, unsatisfied with textual discipline, further employed visual and spatial strategies to embed the pine–cypress symbol into the collective unconscious of Han society, establishing an inescapable social reality that would later precondition the literati’s ethical appropriation.

2.4.1 Confucian ethical transmutation via analogical semiosis​

During the pre-Qin period, the semiotic encoding of pine–cypress symbolism exhibited nascent tendencies toward ethical analogy. Confucius, the foundational figure of Ruist (Confucian) ethics, articulated this symbolic shift in Analects of Confucius – Zi Han: “Only when the year grows cold do we see that pines and cypresses are the last to wither” (Chen and Xu 2011: 108). Specifically, the arboreal resilience to frost was recoded as the literati’s steadfast adherence to moral integrity (qi-jie 气节); their perennial verdancy came to signify the endurance of virtuous character and the pursuit of “immortality through virtue-establishment” (li-de buxiu 立德不朽) (Zuo 2012: 1,328).

The Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi further exemplified this semiotic conversion in Zhuangzi · De Chong Fu: “Receiving life from earth, only pine–cypress attain perfect uprightness” (Guo 2004: 189).

This “anthropo-arboreal analogy” operates through the Neo-Confucian epistemology of gewu zhizhi ‘investigating things to extend knowledge.’ The literati interpreted the biological attributes of pines and cypresses – their cold resistance, evergreen nature, and upward-reaching trunks – as embodied manifestations of universal cosmic principles. For instance, their perseverance through winter was decoded as the moral integrity of “steadfastness,” and their phototropic growth was read as an “orientation toward Heaven” (xiang tian zhi zhi), signifying an inherent spiritual aspiration for the transcendent source, Tian ‘Heaven.’

Thus, the pine–cypress symbol transformed from an external, passive object of moral comparison into an internalized, ethically intentional subject. Their very natural existence was seen as the operation and unfolding of the “Heavenly Principle” (Tianli). This semiotic leap allowed pines and cypresses to transcend their botanical status and their symbolic role as mere markers of social hierarchy (institutional encoding), elevating them into sensuous vehicles for the core philosophical concept of “cosmic-natural unity” (tianren heyi). They thereby crystallized into saturated cultural hyperobjects, deeply interweaving cosmology, ethics, and ontology, and securing an irreplaceable position within the Chinese universe of meaning.

2.4.2 Literati-driven semiotic metamorphosis of confucian moral-spiritual frameworks​​

The dynasties following the Tang and Song eras witnessed intensified literary resignification of pine–cypress symbolism, with poetic works proliferating anthropomorphic depictions. Poets transposed arboreal attributes of resilience and unyieldingness (pine–cypress) into semiotic vessels of individual moral ethos. A paradigmatic example emerges in Nineteen Ancient Airs:

Pines and cypresses stand aloof in essence,

Unlike peach and plum blossoms vying in comeliness.

Yan Ziling’s luminous virtue shines,

Angling amidst azure waves he reclines.

(Li Bai Gufeng《古风》, Ancient Airs no. 12, Li 1999: 103)

Here, the pine’s gu zhi (孤直 ‘solitary rectitude’) becomes an autographic cipher for Li’s own nonconformist persona, rejecting sycophantic sociability symbolized by flowering taoli (桃李). Du Fu’s Ode to Ancient Cypress employs analogous symbolism:

Before Kongming’s shrine stands an ancient cypress;

Bronze-like boughs, stone-rooted steadfastness

[…]

Let no recluse scholar lament in vain,

Since antiquity, greatness meets constraint’s chain.

(Du Fu Gubaixing《古柏行》, “Ballad of the Ancient Cypress,” Peng 1986 : 529)

Through bixing (比兴 ‘analogical symbolism’), Du Fu maps the cypress’s temporal endurance onto Zhuge Liang’s historical virtue, ultimately refracting his personal political marginalization. Bai Juyi’s Jiandisong extends this semiotic operation:

A hundred-foot pine, ten armspan’s girth,

Rooted in frigid ravine’s devalued earth […]

(Bai Juyi Jiandisong 《涧底松》, “The Ravine-Bottom Pine,” Bai 2006: 781)

The ravine pine’s thwarted potential as the support beam of a “cosmic hall” (明堂mingtang) materializes Bai’s critique of the Tang bureaucracy’s neglect of talent – transmuting a botanical entity into a sociopolitical metaphor.

Song literati like Su Shi further codified this symbolism in his “Song Hangzhou Jinshi Shi Xu” (Preface to a poem for a presented scholar departing Hangzhou 送杭州进士诗序). He articulated: “That which flows away, never to return, is water; that which remains unchanged by the seasons is the pine and cypress. To speak of water and then extend the discourse to the pine and cypress is to imply that, for that which is in motion, one should desire the quality of ‘measured restraint’ (難進 nan jin)” (Su 1986: 324). Here, arboreal steadfastness evolves into a transcendent ethical code governing scholar-official conduct. This also persists in modern iterations, as evidenced in Chen Yi’s revolutionary verse:

Heavy snow weighs on green pines,

Yet upright they stand, unbent lines.

(Chen Yi Qingsong 《青松》, “The Green Pine,” Chen 1977: 253)

Therefore, this mechanism of analogical semiosis was not static but evolved through literati practice.

In Tang and Song poetry, the symbol was further subjectified and personalized. Li Bai’s Gufeng embodied his nonconformist persona; Du Fu’s “Ballad of the Ancient Cypress” mirrored both Zhuge Liang’s virtue and his own political marginalization; Bai Juyi’s “The Leisurely Pine by the Cave Hall” became a sociopolitical critique of neglected talent. This trajectory demonstrates how the ethical code was continually renewed through individual appropriation, ensuring its relevance across centuries. Even in the modern era, Chen Yi’s “The Green Pine” underwent a political metalepsis, sublimating individual integrity into a collective ethical spirit for the nation. This process of transposition ideologicalizes traditional imagery, underscoring the potent vitality and enduring moral personification of the pine–cypress symbol within the Chinese cultural context.