What jade represents in Chinese culture

In Chinese culture jade, called yu (玉), represents moral virtue and purity of character, rank and legitimate authority, protection in life and after death, and the continuity of a family. It holds the place that gold holds in the West, with a moral meaning gold never had. The Chinese jade meaning most people have heard, that jade stands for a good person, comes from the Confucian classics, and it sits on top of older layers of ritual and power.

What counted as jade

In early China yu was a broad word for fine stone, not the name of one mineral. The dictionary Shuowen jiezi, compiled by Xu Shen around AD 100, defines it simply as the fairest of stones.

In practice, the jade of Chinese antiquity is nephrite and similar stones. According to the auction house Dreweatts, creamy white nephrite from the Hetian (Khotan) oasis on the Silk Route was the most prized from the Han period onward. Its finest grade is the subject of mutton fat jade.

Green jadeite, called feicui (翡翠), is a latecomer. GIA dates the first jadeite from Burma (now Myanmar) to the late 1700s. It became fashionable at the Qing court, and Sotheby’s names the Qianlong emperor among its earliest known collectors. The top green is covered in imperial jade.

How the meaning was built

Period	What jade was	What survives
Neolithic, from about 8,000 years ago	Ritual and burial object, mark of power	Slit-ring earrings (jue) of the Xinglongwa culture; cloud-shaped pendants and the coiled “pig-dragon” of the Hongshan culture (about 4500 to 3000 BCE); the bi (璧) disc and cong (琮) tube of the Liangzhu culture (about 3300 to 2200 BCE)
Zhou dynasty	Badge of rank and instrument of state ritual	Regulated forms for each rank; sets of pendants worn at the waist; the six ritual jades
Zhou and Han texts	Emblem of virtue	The Book of Rites; the Shuowen jiezi
Han dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE)	Protection for the dead	Burial suits, plugs, cicadas
Tang and Song dynasties onward	Personal ornament and lucky charm	Carvings of children with lotus, flowers and animals
Ming and Qing dynasties	A virtuoso art, then the arrival of jadeite	Plaques with a picture on one side and a poem on the other, named after the Ming carver Lu Zigang; the great carvings of the Qianlong reign (1736 to 1795)

Three points explain the early layers.

Jade was costly because it was so hard to work. The oldest worked jades excavated in China, possibly the oldest in the world according to Sotheby’s, come from the Xinglongwa culture of the northeast. Before metal tools jade could not be cut, only worn away with cord, sand and water, so one object could take months or longer. The Metropolitan Museum of Art makes the same point about Liangzhu bi discs: each one demanded an enormous amount of sawing, grinding and polishing with abrasives. That effort kept jade in the hands of chiefs and ritual specialists and made it a sign of power.

Nobody knows for certain what the bi and cong were for. The British Museum says the purposes of the Liangzhu jades are unknown, though probably ceremonial and possibly protective. The Met notes that as many as forty bi might be buried with one person of high status, laid on the chest, above the head and around the body. The reading of the bi as heaven and the cong as earth belongs to later times. It comes from the Rites of Zhou, which names six ritual jades: a blue-green bi for heaven, a yellow cong for earth, a green gui tablet for the east, a red zhang for the south, a white tiger-shaped hu for the west and a black huang, an arc-shaped pendant, for the north.

Jade stood for the right to rule. The seal of the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, is said to have been cut from jade, and it became the symbol of a dynasty’s legitimacy. The link between jade and power lasted through the imperial period, and carving reached its peak under the Qing. A famous example, the jade mountain in the Palace Museum in Beijing showing Yu the Great taming the flood, stands about 224 cm (7 ft 4 in) tall and was carved in Yangzhou between 1781 and 1787.

Confucius, Xu Shen and the virtues of jade

Two texts lie behind the idea that jade stands for good character, and English pages often merge them.

The first is the Book of Rites, a ritual classic compiled long after Confucius’s death. It has Confucius asked whether gentlemen value jade simply because it is rare. He answers no: jade is valued because its qualities resemble the virtues. The passage then pairs about eleven qualities of the stone with virtues such as benevolence, wisdom, righteousness, propriety, loyalty and good faith. The stock phrase for the idea, junzi bi de yu yu, means that the gentleman compares his virtue to jade.

The second is Xu Shen’s dictionary, which reduces the list to five. The five virtues of jade are his, not Confucius’s.

Quality of the stone	Virtue
Its warm luster	Kindness
Its translucency, which shows what is inside	Uprightness
Its clear note when struck, which carries far	Wisdom
It breaks but does not bend	Courage
Its edges are sharp but do not cut	Integrity

English translations of the five terms vary. Dreweatts, for example, gives charity, rectitude, wisdom, courage and equity.

The Book of Rites also turned the idea into a habit. It says a gentleman does not let jade leave his person without good reason, and that his pendants should sound as he walks. Historians explain that an even chime showed a measured, dignified pace. Neither line is a saying of Confucius himself.

Jade and death

In the Han dynasty jade was believed to protect the body and help the dead reach immortality. Royal burials used plugs for the nine openings of the body, a jade cicada on the tongue as a symbol of rebirth, and a full suit made of jade plaques.

The best-known suits were found in 1968 at Mancheng in Hebei, in the tombs of Prince Liu Sheng, who died in 113 BCE, and his wife Dou Wan. According to The World of Chinese, Liu Sheng’s suit has 2,498 jade plaques joined with about 1,100 g (2.4 lb) of gold thread, and Dou Wan’s has 2,160 plaques and about 700 g (1.5 lb). The Wei emperor Cao Pi banned jade suits in AD 222. What people believed the jades did for the soul is covered in jade spiritual meaning.

Jade in the Chinese language

The character 玉 began as a picture of jade pieces strung on a cord. The Shuowen describes it as three jades joined, with the vertical stroke as the string. The dot was added later to tell it apart from wang (王), king. As a component on the left side of another character it is written without the dot, which is why the “jade radical” looks like the character for king.

Jade also runs through everyday sayings:

• Gold has a price, jade is priceless (huangjin you jia, yu wu jia). A popular proverb with no classical source.
• Better to be broken jade than an intact tile (ning wei yu sui, bu wei wa quan). About choosing honor over survival, from the Book of Northern Qi.
• Jade that is not carved does not become a vessel (yu bu zhuo, bu cheng qi). About education, from the Book of Rites.

What the carved motifs stand for

Many motifs are puns: an object whose name sounds like a lucky word stands for that word.

Motif	Stands for	Why
Bat	Blessings	Bat (fu 蝠) sounds like blessing (fu 福). A bat shown upside down means blessings have arrived
Peach	Long life	An emblem of longevity
Ruyi scepter	Wishes granted	The name means “as you wish”
Lotus	Harmony	A pun on a word for harmony
Deer	Rank and wealth	Deer (lu) sounds like the word for an official’s salary
Fish	Abundance	Fish (yu 魚) sounds like surplus (yu 餘)
Dragon	Power, prosperity and goodness	An old emblem, not a pun
Cicada	Rebirth	It emerges from the ground and sheds its skin
Cabbage	Purity, and a wish for children	See below

The first five readings follow the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and the dragon follows GIA.

The Jadeite Cabbage in the National Palace Museum in Taipei shows how a subject carries a wish. The museum notes that the white and green vegetable suggests purity and that the two insects on its leaves are traditional metaphors for having many children. It stood in the palace of a consort of the Guangxu emperor, which is why some surmise it was part of her dowry.

The pendants most often worn today (the round safety disc, the plain plaque, the gourd, Guanyin and the laughing Buddha) follow the same logic, and jade necklace and pendant meaning takes them one by one.

Jade in Chinese life now

Jade is still the usual family heirloom and blessing gift: a disc pendant for a child, a bangle from a mother or mother-in-law to a bride. When Beijing hosted the Olympic Games in 2008, its medals, the first in Olympic history to use jade, had jade set into the back in a design based on the bi.

Some Chinese commentators give a down-to-earth account of why China chose jade. The heartland had workable jade-like stone near almost every early culture and very few deposits of colored gems, so jade was what there was. Ritual, rank and Confucian morality were then layered on over thousands of years. On this view the attachment is historical, not something in the stone, and one commentator adds that younger Chinese buyers feel it less. For jade’s meanings outside China, see what jade means.