Sun and Moon fans are a kind of Chinese-Taoist fans, typically carried along with statues of deities in processions or placed at their altars in pairs (fig.) and adorned with intricate Chinese symbols. These particular fans depict images of a dragon, representing male power, whilst the other features a phoenix, which symbolizes its female counterpart, together embodying the principles of yin-yang.

These fans get their name from, the fact that one fan displays the Chinese character for ‘Sun’, while the other bears the character for ‘Moon’. In Mahayana Buddhist iconography, the combination of these two characters, ri (日) for ‘sun’ and yue (月) for ‘moon’, forms the character ming (明), which means ‘bright’, ‘clear’, or ‘to understand’, a symbol for Enlightenment.