If a kernel of your interest in Chinese culture stems from the fictional universe of Avatar: The Last Airbender – or your just interested in ancient Chinese Philosophy – you might be curious about the real world Chinese concept of “the elements:” not the Four Elements of water, earth, fire, and air, which originate from ancient India, but the Five Elements (五行) of water, earth, fire, wood, and metal.

So what are these five elements all about; where do they come from; and what can they tell us?

The Five Resources

Let’s begin with the elephant in the room. Maybe you can understand why metal would be considered an element apart from earth, or why air, as a gas, would be excluded outright – but wood? Really? Why would material from a specific plant be considered a fundamental component of the universe?

But there is a reason for this, and it originates with the Five Elements’ humble beginnings.

While the Five Elements would later come to represent “five fundamental component elements of the universe, similar to the Four Elements of Indian Buddhist thought,” as Xu Fuguan (徐復觀) wrote in Essays on the History of Chinese Thought (中國思想史論集), the Zuo Commentary tells us that in the Spring and Autumn Era (roughly 770 to 400 BC), they simply referred to “the material necessities of everyday life.”

This likewise explains why the Chinese term for the Five Elements doesn’t literally contain the word “element” (元素), but instead the word “xíng” (行), which, as Xu puts it: “means ‘in circulation,’ the Five Elements having originally referred to the five material resources ‘in general use.’”

Evolution from Resources to Elements

So the Five Elements started out as the Five Resources – a concept invented not to explain the composition of the universe, but the practicalities of civilization. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation Qin State attacked.

According to Xu, the famous Yin-Yang philosopher Zou Yan (鄒衍) was likely the first to bump up the status of the Five Resources to something like elements by linking them to yin and yang – speculating that he would have probably considered them “a secondary level of yin-yang qi interactions.” In other words, yin and yang qi are the ones and zeroes that make up these elemental building blocks which in turn compose the material world.

The major turning point in this process of appropriation, Xu says, would have been when Zou invented the concept of the “shifting of the 5 virtues” (五德轉移), at which point the Five Elements became “no longer concrete materials, but 5 types of qi – 5 elements.” This concept of “shift” claims, in short, that something like the toppling of a dynasty isn’t a product of randomness or human will, but due to a turning of the tides of the Five Elements and their associated virtues.

And when the Qin State “unified” (conquered) much of what is now known as China around 260 BC, its founding emperor got this idea trending by basing its own legitimacy on the same concept – claiming that they had naturally had replaced the Zhou Dynasty, who possessed the virtue of fire, with their own virtue of water.

Because water beats fire, right? And fire beats… wood?

Generating and Diminishing Relationships

Thus the Five Resources became the Five Elements. But what does this actually tell us about how the universe works?

Supposedly, it should tell us how disparate components of the universe interact – which elements have a generating (生) effect on others, and which diminish or “conquer” (剋) which, in their respective rock-paper-scissors like relationships.

Summarized: Wood generates fire; fire generates earth (i.e. ash); earth generates metal (ie. ore); water generates wood; and metal generates water (according to Xu, this is because “metal can be smelted into a liquid” and “water [comes from] underground springs”).

As for the diminishing effects, play close attention, because these aren’t just the opposites of the generating ones: Wood diminishes (consumes) earth; earth diminishes (absorbs) water; water diminishes (extinguishes) fire; fire diminishes (melts) metal; and metal diminishes (chops through) wood.

An ancient text called the White Tiger Papers (白虎通) tells us this is because: “Water defeats fire, as the numerous snuff out the few;” “fire defeats metal, as the energetic [melts] the solid;” “metal defeats wood, as the hard [cuts through] the soft;” “wood defeats earth, as the concentrated [breaks through] the scattered;” and “earth defeats water, as the tangible [floods] the intangible.”

Characteristics

So now we know how the elements interact. But what do they represent in themselves?

The Book of Documents (尚書) – a historical record and one of the primary Confucian classics – famously says: “Water seeps down; fire rises up; wood [can be] curved or straight; metal conforms to shaping; and earth is [for] sowing and reaping.”

While a number of commentaries offer further annotations, the Baidu Baike online encyclopedia breaks these statements down nicely.

According to the entry, wood is said to be capable of being both curved and straight because of “the growth pattern of the tree – its branches and boughs unfurling upward and outward, some curved and others straight.” Thus, it is known for its qualities of growth and development.

Fire “burns upward” in the sense that it is “hot, upward-rising, and luminous,” and thus known for its qualities of “heat, ascendence, and light.”

Earth is used by humans for the sowing and reaping of crops, and thus is known for its qualities of “bearing, accommodating, and instilling life.”

Water’s moisture seeps downwards, and thus is known for its qualities of “lubricating, cooling, downward flow, and subtlety [or surreptitiousness].”

And metal is smelted and molded, and thus is known for its “purity and reserve”, and its qualities of “pliability, harshness, and being able to be both hard and soft.”

Conclusion

That was quite a bit of information packed in there! Let’s review. There’s endless literature on the Five Elements in association with ancient Chinese philosophy, but here are the key takeaways of what I’ve covered.

The Five Elements represent a materialist view of the cosmos in which everything is composed of the basic five elements of wood, fire, earth, water, and metal.

The theory is built on (and has been appropriated by) the even older philosophical concepts of yin and yang and qi – forces considered even more fundamental than the elements themselves.

Finally, the Five Elements tell us how things work by dividing the universe into abstract classes of qualities – that is, the qualities associated with the elements themselves (heat with fire, cold with water, etc.) – and defining their interactions and predicting future change based on what generates and diminishes what.

‍