| Unlike the glass mirror we have today, the Ancient bronze mirror in Chinese could reflect the image in front of it, and were decorated with colorful pictures and inscriptions. Therefore, it can be seen as an important window through which we study the Chinese ancient society such as the political and economic conditions, language, culture, social customs, religious beliefs etc. in each historical period. Without anything on the front surface of the mirror, the research on it can only be done with description of the mirror in the literary works. These are our basics to have a deep study of Chinese ancient mirror from the social and linguistic perspective. Therefore, this article will research on both front and back of the mirror from the perspective of cultural linguistics. My study is divided into six parts, the first chapter is about the origin of the ancient bronze mirror, the origin of the word "mirror" and the Synonyms of the mirror. The second and third chapters study the inscriptions and cultural patterns on the back of the mirror. The last three chapters focus on the study of the mirror in literary works.The inscriptions of ancient bronze mirrors are most popular in the Han and Tang Dynasties , therefore our study of patterns and inscription on the back of mirror was based on the mirrors in these two dynasties, from which we know the relationship between ancient mirror inscriptions and the development of ancient poetry, the sense of advertisement and the social ideals of people in Han Dynasty, the wording characteristics and its causes of inscription reflected in Han mirror inscriptions, the new features of inscriptions on the back of bronze mirrors in the Sui and Tang in both the content and the form.The spiritual and cultural connotation of patterns on the back of bronze mirror is closely related to Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Taking Han and Tang as examples, we study the culture of bronze pattern in the following facets: the relationship between the figure patterns on Han's mirror and Confucian and Taoist thoughts, the features of Taoism and Buddhism in the Sui and Tang's patterns .The description about mirrors (mirror as an image) in literature is diversified in every historical period. We classifies the images in three columns: the mirror as a partner ( such as beauties' looking at themselves, expressing feelings ,self-refiecting in front of mirror, the mirror love, the mirror hatred and deformable mirror), the mirror as a token (Broken mirror, jade mirror dresser, merits mirror, stone mirror), the mirror as the Magical objects (the mirror of saving lives, Bright and dark mirror with the moon, the mirror suppressing evil monsters , the mirror seeing the future, the mirror of good and evil karma and, mirror divination and mirror listening.)The mirrors in literature go beyond the practicality and into the field of symbolism. The mirror can not only metaphorized as objects like the moon, water, sky, ice, fan, paper and etc, but also can be likened as honest and upright official, hermit, spirits, wise and capable people), and even can be regarded as doctrine like honesty , the warning of noble characters.The image of Ancient mirror has been developed and applied in the modern literature. In the poetry, It is the most obvious that there are more self-reflective description than before. Many novels by modern writers contained the image of mirror, with Zhang Ailing as the most typical one. The characters in her novels are more self-pitied, distorted, weak and fragile, which reveal the true feelings of the characters than self-reflection in poems. Zhang further developed the image of ancient mirror.In short, accompanying human beings for few thousands of years, the mirror is not only the device for people to examine their faces with but also the entity of material and spirit. The tangible but limited mirror contains the invisible and infinite spiritual culture.
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