The original text is wuse 五色 [five colors]. In ancient China, people considered qing 青 [blue/cyan], huang 黄 [yellow], chi 赤 [red], bai 白 [white], hei 黑 [black] as wu shengse 五正色 [the five orthodox colors]. These five colors also have corresponding directions: blue to the east, red to the south, white to the west, black to the north, and yellow to the middle. So they are also called wufang zhengse 五方正色 [the orthodox colors of the five directions].
Five colors.
By Aethelwolf Emsworth. Own reproduction of the scheme found at p. 121 of The Chinese Sky During the Han: Constellating Stars and Society (1997) by Xiaochun Sun and Jacob Kistemaker
Any color can be created through different combinations of these five pure colors, so wuse 五色 can also be regarded as a general reference to “multi-colored.”
