Physical Appearance
Guan is traditionally portrayed as a red-faced warrior with a long lush beard. While his beard was mentioned in the Records of Three Kingdoms, the idea of his red face may have derived from a later description of him in Chapter One of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, where the following passage appears:
| “ | Xuande (Liu Bei's style name) took a glance at the man, who stood at a height of nine chi, and had a two chi long beard; his face was of the color of a zao, with red lips; his eyes were like that of a phoenix's, and his eyebrows resembled silkworms. He had a dignified aura and looked quite majestic. | ” |
Alternatively, the idea of his red face could have been borrowed from opera representation, where red faces depict loyalty and righteousness. Supposedly, Guan's weapon was a guan dao named Green Dragon Crescent Blade, which resembled a halberd and was said to weigh 82 catties (about 18.25 kg or 40 lbs). A wooden replica can be found today in the Emperor Guan Temple in Xiezhou County, China. He traditionally dons a green robe over his body armour, as depicted in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Read more about this topic: Guan Yu
Famous quotes related to physical appearance:
“Even the simple act that we call ‘going to visit a person of our acquaintance’ is in part an intellectual act. We fill the physical appearance of the person we see with all the notions we have about him, and in the totality of our impressions about him, these notions play the most important role.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)