Beyond “Made in China”: visual rhetoric and cultural functionality in translating the traditional Chinese totem Loong 龙

1.1 Historical and modern specificity of Loong 龙

The year 2024 ushers in the third iteration of the Year of the Dragon, i.e., Loong 龙 pertaining to the Chinese zodiac 中国生肖纪年 in the twenty-first century. In traditional Chinese culture, the totem Loong 龙, unlike its literary counterpart dragon, which is occidentally depicted as evil, cruel, atrocious, and venal, holds a sanguine, connotative stature and epitomizes a distingué air of auspiciousness and hierarchical superiority unequaled in flair and brilliance. It symbolizes “power, nobility, honor, luck, and triumph” (Li 2024). As the brand-new year commences, the burgeoning market in China heralds a blossom of Loong-related mascots and souvenirs. With the common belief that commercial endeavors under this sign are “noble, long-lived, and bound for success” (Agarwal et al. 2021: 192), a whole gamut of business enterprises, including technology behemoths (e.g., Apple, Google), large-sized, state-owned, brick-and-mortar stores (e.g., Anta 安踏, Lining 李宁), online purchasing platforms (e.g., Taobao 淘宝, JD.com 京东), and live-streaming studios (e.g., TikTok 抖音), have launched their limited edition products of the Year of the Loong. Bearing with it a distinct implication in both the Eastern and Western spheres, the Loong 龙 icon, as a cultural semiotic, has been fabricated and translated by the visible and invisible designers, namely, the rhetorical dynamics of the Chinese free market, with overarching values germane to the modern Chinese society, e.g., constellation (Chinese Zodiac) and the culture of harmony 星座与和合文化, in a hybrid way. Hence, this study predominantly dwells upon the influential Loong 龙 icon from the inter-disciplinary angle of cultural translation, communication, and fashion. We approach this subject from two distinct vantage points, with the aspiration of contributing a novel conceptual framework termed “cultural functionality” to the vibrant discourse within the field of inter-semiotic translation studies in contemporary China.

1.2 Translative incentives across the cultural spectrum

Post-translation is a concept coined in 2011 by Nergaard and Arduini in the first issue of Translation and further developed by Edwin Gentzler (Diao 2022). They maintained that translation is endowed with an innate property that could be viewed as fundamentally trans-disciplinary, mobile, and open-ended (Nergaard and Arduini 2011). Scholars, they claimed, should foray into and beyond “the traditional borders of the discipline” (Nergaard and Arduini 2011: 8) and undertake post-translation studies from the angle of visual art, architectural aesthetics, applied economics, exercise psychology, fashion communication, and other disciplines of social science. In a similar vein, translators have also reasoned for the merits of the expansion of “translation’s self-imposed boundaries, so that the field reaches out to other disciplines and becomes more open” (Gentzler 2016: 3). Generally speaking, post-translation studies has three major features: first, the translation object transcends the conventional linguistic-level, from Jakobson’s “inter-semiotic translation” (Jakobson 1959) to Eco’s “cross-referencing” (Eco 2004) to Dusi’s “inter-semiotic translation” (Dusi 2015), pivoting on the multi-disciplinary aspect of translation, including visual, temporal, spatial, and behavioral symbolism; second, the identity of the translating subject is not necessarily a linguistic translator. He or she might be connected to diverse fields and have different identities such as an artist, a designer, a communicator (Su and Song 2022). It is even no hyperbole that the translators (e.g., the stylist mentioned below), outshining the physical confines, are capable of morphing into a cultural vibe or an across-dimensional context (e.g., China’s vigorous market); third, the aim of translation no longer accentuates translation outcome but centers more upon the dynamic translation process, together with its cultural footprint and re-constructional leverage. Moreover, facing the augmented migration phenomenon turbocharged by globalization, Conway (2012) categorizes cultural translation, from an empirical approach, into six major modes (see Figure 1), to be heuristic, stressing the conceptual convergence and divergence between modes as well as their relationships with each other.

Figure 1:

Six modes of cultural translation.

The concept of “cultural translation,” as noted by Buden and his colleagues, is technically accessible and applicable in the service of “both the contradictory paradigms of post-modern theory and postmodern political visions: essentialist multiculturalism and its counterpart, deconstructionism” (Buden et al. 2009: 198), or aptly put it, “[cultural translation] shapes its source text [culture] by gathering together all the elements of the source culture they aim to transfer into their own culture” (Bergantino 2023: 4).

1.3 Inter-semiotic dynamics interwoven with rhetorical intensities

Rhetorical means, a political and oratory device prevalent since ancient times, serves to buttress the aforementioned cultural translating procedure. In the twentieth century, Barthes, who subsequently made foundational contributions to the study of textiles and fashion, embarked on a critical investigation of rhetoric, approached through the lens of symbol construction paradigms. His introduction of a semiotic system, characterized by visual symbols, was exemplified in his articulation of “myth” as a “semiological system,” a concept he further nuanced by integrating notions of “connotation” and “denotation” into this semiotic framework (Barthes 1977: 111). Notably, Barthes’ analytical focus veered towards “connotation,” a departure from the path charted by Saussure. Barthes also revealed the transformation between cultural consciousness and mythological construction, applying the theory of rhetoric to the study of various forms of visual symbols such as ritual, fashion, and film. In 1964, Barthes initiated the concept of “the rhetoric of the image” (1977: 32–51) on the basis of decoding visual symbols in advertising images. Contemporary scholars extended rhetorical studies toward multi-layered fields and officially regard visual rhetoric as their research object. In his attempt to blend semiotics and visual art, Danesi demarcates visual rhetoric as a field of inquiry aiming to analyze all kinds of visual images and texts as rhetorical structures, an offshoot of both visual semiotics and the study of “the meanings of visual signs in cultural contexts; and of the psychology of visual thinking, as opposed to verbal thinking – defined as the capacity to extract meaning from visual images” (Danesi 2017). By studying some of the most archetypal works on visual rhetoric, Liu later built on the three basic forms of visual rhetoric structure, namely, “structure of seeing,” “structure of experience,” and “structure of engagement” (2018: 157–158). This study employs these three concepts for its analysis.

The two perspectives, visual rhetoric and translation, are densely intertwined (see Figure 2). From the functional level, visual rhetoric, resorting to its textual fountain, develops a pivotal strategy of cultural translation and both visual rhetoric and translation presume an audience. Visual images, in their intrinsic capacity, wield a more potent persuasive vigor in eliciting emotional reactions, a phenomenon that transcends cultural impediments. Dissimilar to the abstract nature of linguistic constructs, these images possess an objective reality, imbued with an inherent intentionality and implicitness. Moreover, they yield more comprehensive encapsulations of conceptual representations (Collell and Moens 2016: 2807–2817). Therefore, inter-semiotic translation effectually promotes an audience’s persuasion and identification through visual rhetorical strategies, delivering assorted channels of translation continuum through diversified sorts of visual texts. Visual rhetoric, from the standpoint of symbolic constructivism, embodies a fixated assemblage of meaning. Barthes’s mythology system emphasizes the transformation process from “denotation” to “connotation,” indicating the input of cultural identity and awareness into the denotation, and the system demonstrated that visual rhetoric is the cultural translation and myth construction of signification. From this perspective, visual rhetoric could be delimited to be analogous to functionalist translation theory, championed by the prime principle that the purpose of a translation determines its strategy (Bassnett 2013: 83–84). In this study, the main purpose is, through imagery manifestations of Loong, to forge a cultural initiative that is non-persuasive, yet rhetorically impactful in conveying Chinese spirit within fashion dynamics. With the rhetorical basics in place, we proceed to the culturalism and functionality of the Loong 龙 totem.

Figure 2:

The interconnectedness between visual rhetoric and translation.

4.1 Visualized blessing and socio-linguistic outlet of Loong 龙

“Structures of Seeing” refers to the extraction and distribution of the sensible from visual properties. Thinking through the structures of sighted culture requires attending to the historicity of the senses and to how the senses are implicated in linguistic and power relations (Davis 2019). The images illustrated here (see Figure 5) allow us to apprehend the hegemonic structuring of sight through their non-conformity within it. Forbidding as the rhetorical effect of Loong 龙 may appear on a global level, its functional hierarchy has been intact from ancient China until today. Resorting to the field of the photo on the far left featuring a traditional Loong 龙 image, the activity domain here hinges upon the cultural representation and celebration, specifically within the Chinese cultural sphere. The image is part of the festive and propitious advertising posters launched by CCTV (‘China Central Television’ 中央广播电视台), reified by the red background brimmed with fireworks and Loong 龙’s association with affluence and might in Chinese tradition.

Figure 5:

Retrieved from articles from official accounts on Wechat. “2024年最高级的祝福语: 龙行龘龘, 前程朤朤, 生活䲜䲜!” (‘The most advanced and connotative blessing in 2024’), February 8, 2024. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/8ju99j_zA2V2EeDHDb79pQ. “‘龙行龘龘、前程朤朤’, 英语怎么说?”, February 10, 2024. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/_u0R1ReiGj9gluHBB0ylXg.

As for the transitivity side, the primary participant is the character 龘, a tri-combination of the traditional Chinese character 龍. Loong 龙 (written in simplified Chinese in modern China) is a cultural icon and carries with it all the associated cultural significance and mythological attributes. In the broader context, the participants also include the readers or viewers of the image, who bring their cultural understanding to the interpretation of the symbol. The action implied by 龘 is dynamic and vigorous. The Loong 龙 totem is conventionally deemed as a creature of power and movement, often associated with water, weather, or celestial forces in Chinese mythology. Waltzing with Gerber’s approach toward “seeing” and “cultural literacy,” the character enunciated as dá (yangping 阳平, ‘an upward and upbeat sound’), has been functionalized by the “audio description,” a technique used for “translating” visual material to aural readers or critiques and its relation to the “cultural construction of race” (Gerber 2007: 27). The design of the character, with its repeated elements, suggests movement and multiplicity, as if the Loongs are in motion. The red background, as SFG puts it, the circumstance of the rhetorical image enriches the meaning, because red is a color of joy, fortune, and prosperity in Chinese culture. The choice of color situates the Loong within a context of eulogy and yearning for propitiousness. The advent of the Chinese New Year of Loong 龙 spurs the virality of the blessing embroidered by rarely-used Chinese characters 龙行龘龘, 前程朤朤, 生活䲜䲜 (‘The Loongs are soaring, the future is promising, and the life is electrifying’). From an anthropological viewpoint, the character 龘 and the accompanying imagery in the photo can be translated as a symbolic act. It is a visual assertion of cultural identity and heritage, a non-verbal expression that engages with traditional symbols to convey messages of supremacy, providence, and well-being. The interaction between the visual elements and the cultural acquaintance of the viewers constructs, as noted by Morris, a vital dynamic of “logo-centric” interpretation and “visuo-centric” meaning-making (Morris 2009).

4.2 Vivienne Tam and her stylistic lore for Loong 龙

The “Structure of Seeing” text represents a form of visual discourse that predominantly engages with media. Within the realm of fashion, this discourse extensively utilizes the visual rhetoric associated with imagery of attire. Anthropological culture provides the foundational context that shapes how visual symbols are perceived. This includes the collective memory, myths, and historical narratives that inform what a culture sees when encountering a fashion symbol. In the target culture, the structure of seeing is influenced by the preconceptions and interpretive frameworks derived from their own anthropological vista. When encountering the Loong, audiences’ judgments are contingent on their cultural retrospection and inherited narratives to decode its connotation. As “visual anthropology” (Gill 2021: 36) takes on the task of confronting the conundrum of rhetorical mystics, this is a perfect timing to re-consider who remains unsung from popular taxonomies of aesthetic culmination and to bring them into the Chinese cultural cline. This perception is also modulated by the stylists’ mind palace, within which transitivity, mood, and modality re-define the rhetorical visuals. The intentional focus on specific aspects results in a more streamlined and precise interpretation of the subject, thereby enhancing its symbolic impact. The Loong-related brand appears to adeptly implement this rhetorical strategy. It is, therefore, observable that rhetorical underpinning of visual rhetoric encounters its practical application in fashion industry, one of the stellar examples being Vivienne Tam. She is an international designer known for her cultural prowess, east-meets-west approach to design, as well as trail-blazing global collaborations marrying oriental fashion with renowned brands. These Crocs debuted on the runway in 2019 at Shanghai Fashion Week (see Figure 6). Tam’s collection for Crocs cheekily embraces typically Chinese motifs such as clouds, fans, and, most prominently, the Loong 龙 icon. These limited editions sold out and now sell for double the original price on re-sale sites such as Poshmark, rendering it a must for, as articulated by Sauro, addressing “the problematic aspects of history of fashion and the garments lurking in their archives” (Sauro 2023).

Figure 6:

Drexel NEWS, “Chasing the Dragon: China in the Western Imagination on Display at Drexel’s Fox Historic Costume Collection,” October 17, 2023 (Sauro 2023). Image on the right from https://www.vestiairecollective.com/women-clothing/dresses/vivienne-tam/multicolour-viscose-vivienne-tam-dress-34217459.shtml.

Moving from textual level toward the textural level, the first methodology to unravel the mispronounced Chineseness is the fusion of Loong-related elements with the fashion industry. Vivienne Tam’s designs represent a confluence of Eastern and Western aesthetics. Her normalizing approaches, characterized by their portrayal of the source culture as fundamentally intelligible to the Chinese-speaking reviewers, and estranging approaches, where precedence is given to target-language expectations of the abnormality of the source culture, have given way to reflexive approaches, where it is not just the peculiarity of the source language but that of the target language (i.e., the Western audiences), and the historical relationship between them, which becomes capable of exploration. The field is thus the cross-cultural synergy of the reflexive methods manifested in clothing, serving as a medium for artistic expression and multifarious communication. The main participants are the fashion items themselves, which include shoes and a dress adorned with oriental motifs such as the Loong 龙 icon. These items are the “carriers” of cultural symbolism and serve as agents that engage the viewer’s cultural perceptions. Vivienne Tam, as an orientally cultural designer, is an implied participant, whose creative vision has sown together these elements with eclectic, avant-garde perspectives, compared to “the stereotyped and somehow fixed ways of communicating the privilege of luxury brands” (Reinach 2013: 150). The designs incarnate a process of cultural translation and transmutation. They function by conveying a narrative that bridges Eastern and Western design principles. The incorporation of traditional Chinese motifs like the Loong 龙 on modern, Western-style clothing items such as Crocs is an act of cultural synthesis, influencing consumers ultimately by sharing the same culture as fashion practitioners. The juxtaposition of the built heritage – Loong 龙 icon – contemporary clothing and accessories also transform the cultural venue into a setting that is open for interpretation under contemporary relevance and understanding, for which the functionality and narrativity of semiotic concepts help explicate the “processes and theories of interpretation and communication” (Calinao 2023). In such a nexus, cultural anthropology has come to emphasize the ways in which the field has a transformative effect on the translators themselves: To produce cultural translation is not a “question of replacing text with text” but of “co-creating [visual] text,” of producing a symbolic version of “a lived reality,” and it is in this sense that “it can be powerfully transformative for those [Loong outfit designers] who take part” (Jordan 2002: 98). The circumstances are multifaceted. There is the commercial context in which these fashion items are sold and re-sold, often at a premium, reflecting their value as culturally resonant objects. There is also the socio-cultural context of “chinoiserie” (Alayrac-Fielding 2016), a decorative style that aimed at imitating luxurious East Asian artifacts, indicating a Western fascination with Chinese aesthetics, where these items both cater to and challenge by re-contextualizing traditional motifs in contemporary fashion.

5.1 Visual atmosphere and rhetorical aesthetics in household functionality

Upon the celebration of the 2024 Chinese lunar New Year, Wallvy, an e-commerce-driven, wallpaper-designing company launched its “oriental Chinese dragon” items (see Figure 7 [left]). Likewise, Pierre Frey, a French fashion forerunner, blended the vogue French-cyan color with the traditional Chinese Loong 龙 dipped in rainbow-like hues, clouds, and fire, themed “Dragon De Feu” (see Figure 7 [right]). We examine the spatial rhetoric and translation approach employed in this household ornament experience, considering perspectives such as the selection of spatial sites and the presentation of interior spatial arrangements.

Figure 7:

Retrieved from (Left) “Oriental Chinese Dragons,” Wallvy.com, March 2020, and (Right) “Dragon De Feu,” wallpaper, Pierre Frey. Retrieved from https://wallvy.com/oriental-chinese-dragons-wallpaper-3954; https://www.selectedwallpapers.com/en-hk/products/dragons-de-feu.

The “Structure of Experience,” as we previously put, incorporates an extensive sensory engagement, featuring the faculties of vision, audition, olfaction, gustation, and tactility. Within the realm of visual aesthetics, the ocular sense is foregrounded; however, the elements of design possess the capacity to invoke the remaining senses metaphorically or associatively, thereby exerting an influence upon the mood and modality. In SFG, the mood of the clause is realized by the arrangement of the “subject” and the “finite” (the part of the verb that carries tense). Translated into a visual context, the “subject” can be considered the most salient element within the design, which for both wallpapers is the Loong totem. The “finite” can be seen as the use of color and form which “tenses” the subject by giving it a context and a mode of being – whether it is perceived as historical, cultural, powerful, or mystical. Therefore, a spontaneous overflow of aesthetic responses is outlined and evaluated. Transcending the mere “exposure effects,” the “Oriental Chinese Dragons” wallpaper presents a bold, declarative mood through its dominant Loong figures set against a dim background, suggesting a strong visual statement that anchors the experience, and fixating, as propounded by Palmer, a concrete, non-linear “arousal dynamic” (Palmer et al. 2013).

5.2 Site selection: Wallvy’s internal effect and Pierre Frey’s external sway

The deployment of Wallvy’s wallpaper within the intimate context of a living room further shapes the experiential encounter. A living room, conventionally a space of comfort and personal expression, becomes a canvas for the wallpaper’s visual narrative, transforming it into a sanctuary of cultural storytelling and aesthetic statement. This multi-modal context of specific scenes and the cultural localities of indoor embellishments, could have various materializations, serving singular translative initiatives and communicative purposes (Yang 2021). The familiarity and domesticity of the living room juxtaposed with the boldness of the Loong imagery creates a dynamic interplay that affects the mood – rendering it simultaneously assertive and captivating. This study deems the mood-oriented ornamental technique as efficacious, by which cultural translators use “available multimodal resources in the target social context” to translate and interpret social semiotics (Chow 2023).

Considering the panoramic view, Pierre Frey Paris, founded in 1935, is an eclectic French company that creates, edits, and manufactures fabrics, wallpapers, custom-made rugs, and exceptional furniture. Paris, with its gorgeous tapestry of cultural history and its status as a nexus of fashion and design, imbues Pierre Frey’s wallpaper with an inherent narrative of sophistication and cosmopolitanism. This study treats figurative and semiotic sites as epitomes of “argument,” that is, as pairings of “form and function that capture a line of reasoning” that can be related to rhetorical topoi (Tseronis 2021). The Parisian context, furthermore, elevates the modality of the design, suggesting a cultivated taste and a connection to one of the largest ethnic Chinese dwellers in Europe. This geographical anchoring also contributes to the experiential structure by infusing the visual aesthetic with a sense of place that is historically associated with artistic innovation and luxury. Thus, aesthetic pleasure emerges from the specific mood-processing experience, which itself is a function of the properties of the object and characteristics of the perceiver. The more fluently a “perceiver” (i.e., the Parisians in this case) processes an object, the more positive the “aesthetic response” will be (Moshagen and Thielsch 2010).

5.3 Interior visual elements and experiential facets of the wallpaper

The declarative mood of the “Dragon De Feu” is instantiated through the spirited portrayal of Loong – a mythical creature symbolizing dominance and auspiciousness in Chinese culture. The Loong commands the visual space as the thematic “subject,” while the “finite” is characterized by the striking cyan hue, infusing the design with contemporaneity. The mood here is assertive, making a bold aesthetic statement that reverberates through the interior space. The modality of this design communicates a high degree of certainty in its style – there is an assuredness in the blending of cultural elements. Yet, there is also a modulation of possibility, as the Loong seems to dance between the traditional and the contemporary, signifying a robust intersection of meanings and interpretations. The “could be” of the modality lies in the viewer’s cultural reading of the dragons, which may vary from historical reverence to modern re-interpretation, re-incarnated by an interplay of multiple modalities that constructs a “multi-layered semantic source,” with non-verbal symbols as a “frame” and a productive visual system designed to reinforce the “theme and mood” (Wu 2020). The experiential dimension of this wallpaper is multi-layered. The visual engagement is immediate and intense, prompting an immersive experience that is almost tactile in its richness. The choice of colors and the fluidity of the Loongs’ forms invite the viewer to a sensory dialogue with the wallpaper, one that might evoke the sounds of mythical roars or the smells of an ancient realm re-envisaged, facilitating the critical participants, as evinced by Levy’s medical and empirical evidence, to “flexibly shift between in-person and remote modalities as circumstances demand” (Levy et al. 2023).

Wallvy’s “Oriental Chinese Dragons” wallpaper presents a more subdued yet equally compelling design that leans on traditional Chinese semiotics while engaging with sense and sensibilities. The mood evoked hereby is one of narrative declaration. The visual “subject” of the Loong is underscored by the “finite” background, creating a mood that speaks of reverence and tradition. The modality present in Wallvy’s wallpaper leans towards the probable and the traditional, with a respectful nod and bow to the historical significance of the Loong motif. However, there is a softness in the colors used, a suggestion of a narrative that is more reflective, perhaps introspective, allowing for personal interpretation and limbic resonance. A distinctly rhetorical and psychological approach is, furthermore, reified by the leverage of “visual communication,” efficacious in its abstract modality, visual symbolism and the “emotive expressivity” of a vivid use of color (Ghiasian 2023). As is denoted, the sensory experience and visual account of Wallvy’s design does not merely occupy space; it converses with it, allowing the walls to become a canvas that narrates tales of heritage and lore. The interaction with this wallpaper is likely to be more contemplative and selectively appropriated. Baker (2019: 115) defines “selective appropriation” as “a deliberate selection and omission within a text.” Translated into cultural contexts, Wallvy purposefully simplifies the profundity of Chinese culture and retrieves the thought-provoking minimalism of Loong semiotic, expressly re-iterating, throughout this cultural translation process, the essentiality of the balance between “readability” and “accuracy” (Wang et al. 2023).

6.1 Anna May Wong and Yang Liping: Loong 龙 outfits in the public limelight

The field, a systemic functional ingredient, concerns the subject matter or the “what” of the discourse. In this instance, the field is the Loong-oriented fashionable costumes displayed by Anna May Wong and Yang Liping under social spotlights (see Figure 8). The field exemplifies not only the realm of fashion but also cultural representation and the heritage these garments carry. The dresses worn by both stars are rich in symbolism and mirror the transitivity of narrative triggers – how action and agency are represented, or as Phillips argued, the “narrative transportation” – to be carried away by a visual story – proposed as a “distinct route to persuasion” (Phillips and McQuarrie 2010). Set off by the dark aura, the Loong pattern applied to Anna May Wong’s dress from 1934 is a transitive act that conveyed a shift in the perception of Asian fashion and female agency during an era when the representation of Asian culture in Western fashion was still novel. Similarly, Yang Liping’s dress functions as a transitive, organic “narrative approach,” where the visual style and the formal system of the moving image are constructed around clothing (Mijovic 2013: 175), signaling the active role of women in contouring and imparting cultural engagement through fashionable outfits.

Figure 8:

(Left) Anna May Wong in a dress designed by Travis Banton in 1934. (Right) Yang Liping. Retrieved from https://www.chinoy.tv/look-chinese-dragon-designs-in-historical-and-modern-fashion/; https://k.sina.com.cn/article_1661401325_6306f8ed00100ke73.html.

The tenor deals with the relationships and roles of the participants involved. Both Wong and Yang present themselves as cultural ambassadors as well as fashion icons, thus modifying the tenor of the event from mere display of personal style to a statement of cultural identity. Their women’s community-based activism did contribute to the reconceptualization of concepts and categories as women defied stereotypes and notions of passivity. These were fashionists’ attempts to create gestural spaces for an alternative understanding of gender and development issues with strong concerns for equity and justice.

The transitivity in this context is about how the dresses function as agents of cultural testimony and the actions they perform in the narrative of female empowerment. The transitivity process here is material, because the Loong-embroidered drapery serves to enact cultural dialogue and social commentary. Ancient monarchs and emperors in China were epitomized by the Loong robes (龙袍, ‘a Chinese dragon-decorated piece of clothes designed for the tianzi 天子, i.e., son of the heaven, or king of the state’) because Loong functions as the cultural synonym of almighty, conquest, and authority. From a cultural community perspective, however, the garments of Loong icon have been resurrected and re-fined into the aforementioned “condensation symbols” for broader notions of cultural pride and female agency. Both Wong and Yang’s outfits challenge traditional gender roles by placing women in the spotlight through the use of symbols historically linked to male power. The Loong is recontextualized within a feminine skeleton, contesting the binary association of dominance with masculinity. This rhetorical effect is achieved through the strategic translation of orthodox motifs, color schemes, and stylistic references that resonate with collective memory and shared cultural stories. The attire of both Wong and Yang challenges traditional gender roles and expectations, especially in the context of when Wong was active. The seismic shift of those chosen garments that are culturally-loaded and designed with a contemporary touch, goes beyond the assertions of their own agency, re-defining what it means to be a female figure on the public stage. While women have been victimized, and banned from “masculine” processes of self-contentment, as Delhaye pointed out, they have at the same time been involved in many “other” – often trivialized – developments of individualization (Delhaye 2006), fashion externalization being one of the quintessential. The rhetoric of “community” gets embellished with colorful empowerment of gold and red; Moreover, it re-calibrates the “inequalities of caste, class and gender and conflicts and contestations” (Sharma 2017: 87) when Yang stepped onto the stage and eulogized the classic Loong decorations (see Figure 8 [right]). Yang’s fingernails were adorned akin to longzhu 龙爪 (‘Loong’s paw, i.e., the kings’ hand, embodying supremacy, and sovereignty’). The fashion choices of Wong and Fan, through the demolishment of archaic lens – Loong equals male dominance over the gendered others, jumpstart a non-verbal, egalitarian progression of communication that speaks volumes about cultural identity, woman agency, and the role of fashion as a medium for cross-cultural, inter-gender dialogue, delivering a statement that translates the cinematic arena of the red carpet into a wider landscape on diversity and representation in mass media.

7.1 Cultural functionality: a proposal grounded in SFG, cultural translation, and visual rhetoric

This study has endeavored to navigate beyond the deep-seated perception of “Made in China” by delving into the opulent semiotic and cultural dimensions of the traditional Chinese Loong 龙. The analytical process, harnessing the insights afforded by SFG, cultural translation, and visual rhetoric, has yielded a novel paradigmatic framework for interpreting the Loong’s metamorphosis within the global cultural texture. Hence, we define this newly-proposed concept “cultural functionality” as a kind of rhetorical and performative construct, of which cultural metaphors and symbols gain valence in translating consequential interactions and exchanges within and between multifarious cultures.

The proposal posits that the Loong, in its trans-cultural voyage, operates as a potent semiotic resource – a vessel of complex cultural narratives and symbolisms. Through the lens of SFG, this symbolic capital of the Loong has been dissected into its field, tenor, and mode, together with mood, modality, and transitivity, which are re-contextualized in diverse cultural settings, thereby translating a multi-faceted dialogue between the source and target cultures. The findings designate that this traditional Chinese totem is represented in a tripartite-model as a rhetorical incentive buttressed by the structure of “seeing, experience, and engagement.” These are correlated to their tri-dimensional target culture: (I) Anthropological Culture. The act of translation was embedded in the context of the buzzwords viral on social media and ethnological footprints embodied in the designs bountiful of cultural re-utilization. The source culture is not merely confined to its mythical and historical roots; it expands into a broader narrative canvas, painting stories of wisdom and inheritance that resonate across cultures; (II) Semiotic Culture. The Loong’s re-appropriation in fashionable outfits implies a collaborative interaction that transcends geographical boundaries, enabling a cultural interlocution that is both self-evident and self-motivated. The semiotic culture has been re-interpreted by a mutual respect and an intricate web of relationships between the cultural custodians of the Loong and the global localization that harbors it; (III) Community Culture. More of a sub-type of fashion communication, this cultural translation strategy has a propensity for de-labelling by substituting gendered factors for the unisex or bias-free materialization in the source culture, allowing for an embodied experience of cultural mythology and transposition to influence and re-shape the tenor of societal discourse on gender and racial equality. Therefore, we reach a conclusion that effective cultural translations that include strong visual rhetorical elements will be useful strategies for other cultures that aim to re-discover the gist of semiotics, streaking far beyond the confines of linguistics alone (Janicka 2023).

7.2 Concluding remarks

Previous research on cultural translation of social phenomenon has, by and large, fixated on the translation strategies at the textual level, with little scholarly attention paid to the translator’s ideological mediation and the rhetorical functionalities upon the translated cultural semiotics. Given the aforementioned narratives and interpretations of the Loong icon that contribute to the mythic genre to which Chinese totem belongs, the translator (i.e., stylists and designers in this study) plays a crucial role in selecting, emphasizing, and modifying the rhetoricity, and consequently, re-structuring a Chinese cultural canon. In light of this visual specificity and performative distinction, this study proposes a “functionalized” inquiry into the culturalism of the Loong in the source culture. While cultural translation is not equipped with literal “plausibility” (López et al. 2017) because its textual-level counterpart, rhetorical inquiry allows researchers to investigate what is still “Chineseness” and those already overhauled by fashion “hybridization” (Tsui 2013). This study shows that conceptions of national identity in Chinese fashion have evolved from the promotion of concrete “traditional Chinese” symbols (Loong) to more amorphous ideas about “the Chinese spirit” (Tsui 2013). In particular, it sheds light on the inter-cultural priorities of translators as they decide how “cultural functionality” comes to fruition in both academic and material world. What still flies under the radar, however, is that it hovers solely around the Chinese symbols, rather than the invigorating international semiotics and fashion communication. In fact, pertinent studies have already delved into cultural emblems that hold sway in socio-economic realms. For instance, the concept mianzi (面子 literally means ‘face’ and metaphorically means ‘dignity and grace’) functions as a “culturally contextualized” determinant of brand equity, highlighting the significance of symbolic factors in emerging markets (Filieri et al. 2019: 376). Future re-calibrations, including emic (cultural-specific) concepts such as langtuteng (‘wolf totem’; Hong 2016), guanxi (‘relation’), mianzi (‘prestige face’), and renqing (‘favor’; Chen and Bedford 2022), together with ethnographic approaches and Critical Discourse Analysis (Richardson and Barkho 2009), are encouraged to venture into the uncharted visualities and resurrect the potency of rhetoric.