What a jade necklace signifies

The significance of a jade necklace in Chinese tradition is twofold: it is worn as protection, and it carries a wish for good fortune. Which wish depends on what hangs from it. A plain disc stands for safety, Guanyin or the Buddha for protection and peace, a gourd for prosperity. These are beliefs and, often, wordplay. None of them is an effect of the stone.

What is a jade necklace?

The phrase covers two different things.

A pendant on a cord or chain. This is the form with the long history. A catalogue record at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia describes it: jade ornaments were and are worn as protective amulets, normally on a chain or on a red or green string around the neck, and they may also be tied to the wrist or ankle of a baby or child. The record adds that the belief in jade’s protective power remains strong among Chinese people in China and overseas.

A strand of beads. Here the meaning lies in the jade itself and the value lies in the matching. GIA explains that fine jadeite beads are matched for color and texture first, then for transparency, size and symmetry, and that because matching is so difficult, long strands and large beads can sell for extremely high prices. According to Sotheby’s, an evenly matched strand generally has to be cut from a single piece of rough, and cutting spheres can waste more than half of it. The jadeite bead necklace Cartier made in the 1930s for the heiress Barbara Hutton sold for US$27.4 million in 2014. That is an auction record for an exceptional piece and says nothing about ordinary strands.

Jade pendant shapes and what each stands for

Many of these meanings are puns. In Mandarin, an object whose name sounds like a lucky word can stand for that word.

Pendant	Chinese name	Traditionally stands for	Where the meaning comes from
Safety disc	ping’an kou (平安扣), “peace buckle”	Safety and completeness	Two concentric circles; descends from the ritual bi disc
Plain plaque	wushi pai (无事牌)	A life with no trouble	Pun on “nothing happening”: a blank surface, an uneventful life
Guanyin	Guanyin (观音)	Protection and peace	The bodhisattva of compassion
Laughing Buddha	fo gong (佛公)	Protection and peace; tolerance and good humor	The pot-bellied Budai, identified with Maitreya; the round belly and smile
Gourd	hulu (葫芦)	Blessings and advancement	Sounds like fulu (福禄), good fortune and official rank
Pixiu	pixiu (貔貅)	Wealth, especially for people in business	A mythical beast said to swallow treasure and never let it out
Bean pod	fudou (福豆), “fortune bean”	Varies with the seller	See below

GIA’s account of jade lore lists further carved motifs and their conventional meanings: the bat for happiness, the butterfly for long life, the dragon for power, prosperity and goodness, and the peach for immortality.

The readings in the table are the ones dealers in the Chinese trade give, and they are not all equally fixed. The bean pod is a smooth, elongated pendant popular in highly translucent jadeite because its plain curved surface shows the material well. One dealer will tell you it stands for harvest and abundance, another for success in examinations and promotion. Sellers attach the meaning, which shows how loosely some of these readings are held.

The safety disc

The disc with a hole in the middle is the simplest and most traditional pendant. It descends from the bi, the flat jade disc of ancient Chinese ritual, which GIA describes as a symbol of heaven and, for many jadeite buyers, a symbol of eternity with great spiritual significance. Dealers say it is the piece most often chosen for a child, as a wish that the child stay safe. GIA’s note on proportion is that a good disc looks plump, with the jade more than twice as wide as the hole.

“Men wear Guanyin, women wear Buddha”

This is a well-known saying (nan dai Guanyin, nü dai fo) about the two most common figure pendants. Two explanations circulate.

The first is wordplay in Mandarin, not history. Guanyin sounds like guanyin (官印), an official’s seal, so the figure wishes a man success in his career. Fo (佛), Buddha, sounds close to fu (福), good fortune.

The second is about temperament: Guanyin’s gentleness is supposed to temper a man, and the Buddha’s broad-mindedness to ease a woman’s worries.

People in the trade do not treat the saying as a rule. Several say outright that either sex wears either figure today, and that the choice should follow personal preference or faith.

Where the custom comes from

Wearing jade hung from the body began as a custom of the elite. The Book of Rites says that a gentleman is never without his jade pendant unless there is a reason, because he compares his virtue to jade.

In the Zhou dynasty, nobles wore sets of jade pendants hanging from the belt. What a person could wear was fixed by rank: the longer the set, the higher the rank. The pieces chimed as the wearer walked, so a measured step produced an even sound and hurrying was audibly bad manners. What jade represents in Chinese culture follows the story from ritual object to personal ornament.

Who gives a jade pendant and who wears one

Pendants are family gifts. Things That Talk, a Leiden University object-study project, records that parents give jade bracelets or pendants to children as talismans. Dealers describe pendants that came from a grandparent and were worn for life as a keepsake of the giver.

Some folk etiquette goes with a personal pendant. Many wearers do not let strangers handle it, and a common rule says not to wear jade that a stranger has worn, with an exception for pieces handed down in the family or given by relatives and close friends. These are customs, and people in the trade differ on how seriously to take them.

Jade jewelry meaning in general

Whatever its form, jade jewelry carries the same layered meaning. GIA sums it up: the Chinese associate jade with clarity of mind and purity of spirit, and jadeite also symbolizes prosperity, success and good luck. A popular proverb says that gold has a price but jade is priceless.

The form adds its own accent. A bangle is the unbroken circle and the gift from an elder; see jade bracelet meaning. A ring has the most specific history, in the archer’s thumb ring; see jade ring meaning. A pendant is the form where the carved subject states the wish.

Luck and health claims

There is no clinical evidence that wearing jade, or any other gemstone, prevents or treats illness or changes a person’s luck. Science-Based Medicine summarizes controlled tests of crystal healing in which people report the same sensations and the same improvement whether they hold a real stone or a look-alike, so any effect is put down to expectation. The beliefs themselves are described in jade spiritual meaning.

Choosing a carved pendant: look at the face

On a Guanyin or Buddha pendant, carvers and dealers look first at the face. It should fall on clean, evenly colored material with no spot or flaw across it, and the expression should be serene: compassionate for Guanyin, cheerful for the Buddha.

That tells you about the carving, not about the stone. Whether the jade is untreated is a separate question. Home checks narrow it down, and only a gemological laboratory report settles it. For cleaning a carved pendant, crevices included, see how to clean jade.