Work
Text of "Wang"
for sheng, zheng, saron, bonang, four singers and taonga puroru
About
"Wang" in Chinese (including the archaic word) can mean about 48 different words. There are synonyms and antonyms, nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, quantifiers, and onomatopoeia and so on. The semantics are broad and inclusive in the thousands according to the written character, the tone used, and the context in which it is used. Generally, "Wang" in Chinese can have twenty different meanings. Some of these meanings are similar; sometimes they are completely opposite. Tones have always been with the Chinese language. The writer of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Shen Yue (445-513) wrote the Four Tones Spectrum. There is also the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet released in 1958 by the Chinese government. In fact, the Chinese tones have become vibrant, musical, richly semantic and hugely expressive language. Thus the word 'Wang', as a sound, has huge potential to stimulate the creative imagination.
Shen Nalin