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Black is a gloomy and inconspicuous colour. Black is often seen as evil, mysterious, and even signify sadness. In nature black is a colour of dirt, a colour of charcoal, and that of the soot. Why is black used as a symbol of mourning?

In Chinese customs, when people die such as those of old people, the children will need to wear black, and some others wear different colours such as green, white, blue and even red. In places like Hong Kong, we always see people dressed in black and even with sunglasses when their friends or relatives die. Black is often worn as a symbol of mourning. I think that it is because black signify sadness. When we are happy, we normally would want our lives to be 'colourful'. Whenever we see rainbows, we feel happy and even filled with awe to see the rare sight of rainbows. Rainbows are so colourful and it is something that we do not get to see everytime. People yearn to see rainbows. The sight of it makes people feel happy and even surprises to see it! When people die, especially our love ones, we are filled with grief. Nothing seems to be joyful when there are death and grief in our hearts. Even the sight of rainbows would be meaningless. We do not want to dress in 'colourful' clothes either. Our feeling of sadness and grief naturally make us feel there is no colour in lives with the loss of love ones. Thus, black is the best colour to signify our feeling - feeling of sadness, grief, lost and emptiness at the loss of someone in the world.

We mourn for the lost of our love ones. During times of mourning, it is natural that we feel sad and hence as mention earlier, it is natural that we are not in the mood to feel 'colourful' - hence, people who mourns tends to wear black. There is no mood and time to merry-making when there is death or loss of love ones in the family.

When people die, we do not know where they will go to and what will happen to them too. Black, besides a colour of sadness, grief, emptiness and lost, it also symbolizes mysterious, evil, as in black magic, witches and sorcerer. Thus it is the best colour to indicate death and mourning.

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