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K'an-yu :: Feng Shui Jade

The jade artist is anonymous to us today, but in his own time he was often known to his contemporaries by his distinctive style. And so comes to us one of the few legends connected with the jade artist, a story as well known to the Chinese as is the story of Romeo and Juliet to us.

Once upon a time there was a poor young jade carver, in love with a rich man's daughter. The girl's father forbade the courtship, but, young and in love, the pair eloped anyway.

To do this the young man had to give up his art, since his style was so unique that any object he carved would reveal his identity.

But one day his beloved fell sick. Without money to purchase medicine, his only alternative was his art. He carved a beautiful goddess in green jade, then sold it, on condition that the merchant who purchased it never reveal how he obtained it.

As fate would have it, the girl's father was an avid collector of jade, and the piece soon fell into his hands. Instantly recognizing the style, he offered the merchant a huge bounty to reveal the whereabouts of the carver. And although no merchant would commit such a deed except in fiction, this merchant weakened.

The father found the pair, killed the young man, and took his daughter home.

But late one night the girl took the jade goddess and fled again to the site of her great happiness. Digging up the grave, she threw herself into the arms of her beloved, there to wait until death came upon her.

But when the moon rose a curious thing happened. The spirit of the young man, which had taken refuge in the cool jade goddess, moved back into the inert body and the lover lived again.

At this moment the father arrived. So overcome was he by the miracle that he welcomed the young man as his son and accepted the couple into his home and heart. The jade goddess was given as an offering to a nearby temple, where it is said to reside today, its very presence a comfort to all young lovers.

Jade Buddha Pendant

Feng Shui Jade History

If a ruler perfectly observes the rites of the state, white jade will appear in the valley.
-- Li Ji (Book of Rites, compiled approx. 300 BCE)

The Chinese have been continuously creative in working jade for more than six thousand years - from the Neolithic Hermadu culture (about 5000 BC) to the present. But China is hardly the only culture to place a high value on jade.

Jade of one type or another is found in Burma, Central America, Brazil, Canada, Japan, India, Siberia, Finland, Tanzania, and elsewhere; in this country, it occurs in California as well as in the northeastern and southwestern states.

It is prized for its hardness, glassy luster, and rich translucent colors. Colors vary from white to green, but there are also red, yellow and lavender jades.

In China, a clear emerald-green stone is valued most highly. According to ancient legend, yu, as the jewel is known, came from the holy mountains and was thought to be crystallized moonlight. In fact, jade came from along the Silk Road.

Because jade is extremely hard, it might have been tried early on for tools and weapons. But jade is also brittle, and the forms that have survived appear to have been used for symbolic, rather than utilitarian purposes.

Jade Dragon Statue

Jade clubs, for example, were used to represent authority among the Maori. Knives, daggers, and scepters were used in ritual or military ceremonies in China.

Jade often possessed not just symbolic but belief-system significance - as seems the case with the mysterious bi discs and cong tubes found in Neolithic Chinese grave sites (the former is a disc with a hole in the center, the latter a tube that, in section, is square on the outside and round on the inside).

Centuries later, the corpses of high-ranking officials were clothed in suits made of more than 2,000 thin slivers of jade sewn together with gold wire. Jade Cong.

In ancient times, as today, jade was also used for personal adornment. Jade rings, bracelets, pendants, beads, and the like appear very early.

Even today, the ring disk - a symbol of heaven - is still worn as a talisman; jade bracelets are believed to protect against rheumatism in some regions of China.

Exceptional artistic effects can be achieved with jade - outside of Asia, some of the most stunning work was created by Central American artists of Olmec, Toltec, and Mayan cultures.

Still, no culture can rival China for the breadth, depth, richness, and variety of work in this medium.

Burma Jade Buddha

"Jade" is really several stones - or at least that is the usage of the Chinese word, yu, which was applied even to stones such as serpentine and aventurine that are no longer considered types of jade.

The English word jade is properly applied to two distinct stones: nephrite and jadeite. Nephrite, either from local sources or imported from central Asia, was almost the only jade used by the Chinese until around the time of the American revolution when jadeite was introduced from Burma.

Although quite different in mineralogical composition, the two stones share many qualities. A milky, soft-colored stone, nephrite is a calcium and magnesium silicate with a tightly bonded, fibrous structure.

It is usually white green or violet but can be other colors as well.

Jadeite, a sodium and aluminum silicate, comes in more colors, ranging in tone from white to gray and in hue from yellow-orange to violet.

But it is best known for the bright green of the highly polished form that is favored for jewelry, where it is cherished for its high luster.

Jade's spectrum of colors is the result of trace elements - such as magnesium in green jade or iron in jades with a yellowish hue - mixed in with the snowy white of the pure mineral.

Prior to the introduction of Buddhism in the first century A.D., the deity was never represented in human form in China. But the native Taoists were quick to assimilate this new form of worship into their own.

White Jade Disk

A Triad of Gods was created, the most important being the Pure August Jade Emperor, Yu Huang Shang Ti, who became so popular that the Buddhists in time also adopted him. Also known as Tien Kung, he is the supreme deity of folk religion. His rule was traditionally conceived of as equal to that of the reigning emperor of China.

His concern is meting out justice to men through his subordinate deities. He is ultimately responsible for the deification of other gods, or for their dismissal from the pantheon.

The Jade Emperor dwelt in the Jade Castle of Abstraction, high above the earth and the thirty-three heavens, according to some accounts; or according to others, on the Mountain of Jade in the K'un Lun range. Here, on the shore of the Jade Lake, grew a Jade Tree, which measured three hundred arm lengths across and whose red jade fruit conferred the boon of eternal life.

Buddha pendant

Feng Shui Jade Techniques

Without being worked, jade cannot be shaped into a vessel;
without being educated, people cannot be shaped into virtuous citizens.
-- from the Trimetrical Classic, a Song dynasty (960-1279) primer on the Confucian Classics

Jade cannot be carved. Because of its hardness, it can rarely be shaped by chiseling or chipping but must be worn away by abrasion with tools and hard sand pastes.

This is a process that requires immense patience - even with modern machinery equipped with diamond-tipped burrs that grind out intricate designs, it remains laborious.

Yet jade appeared in Chinese cultures several thousand years before metal tools existed. Neolithic jade artisans worked with bamboo, bone, and stone tools, using a drilling or bow action to abrade the jade with sand.

Because the process was so labor-intensive and time-consuming, jades reflected the ability of a ruling elite to command resources, and therefore came to symbolize power, status and prestige.

Buddha with Lotus

Nephrite's fibrous nature makes it a great challenge to the craftsman. Yet, as overcompensation, its toughness makes possible the rendering of plates, bowls, and vases paper-thin, as well as the cutting of chains from solid blocks of stone. Nephrite is the better material, in general, for such elaborate work, but the superb craftsmen of China have successfully wrought the more sensitive jadeite in similar fashion.

In the jade-carving workshops of today, there are thought to be as many as 30 kinds of jade in use. Famous among the jade workshops on mainland China are those in Qingtian (Zhejiang province), Shoushan (Fujian province), and Luoyang (Hunan province).

Its color represents loyalty; its interior flaws, always showing themselves through the transparency, call to mind sincerity; its iridescent brightness represents heaven; its admirable substance, born of mountain and of water, represents the earth. Used alone without ornamentation it represents chastity. The price which all the world attaches to it represents the truth. To support these comparisons, the Book of Verse says: "When I think of a wise man, his merits appear to be like jade."
-- Confucius

Neolithic jades - such as the bi discs and cong tubes described above -- are often found in burial sites, suggesting a ritual significance. By the time of the Zhou dynasty (771-221 BCE), when the Book of Songs was written, the prescribing of jade as an aid to attaining immortality was well established.

White Jade Vase

Deceased royals might be buried in a jade suit with jade plugs inserted in body openings. The use of jade in burial ritual continued into and beyond the Han Dynasty (100S BCE-100S CE, about the period of Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire), when in addition to body plugs, other jade objects were interred with the deceased. Jade cicadas, for example, representing rebirth, might be placed on the deceased person's tongue.

Early dynastic jades also took the form of belt hooks, archer's rings, and guards for swords. During the earliest Chinese dynasties, the Shang and the Zhou, pendants became an increasingly popular adornment. Through the centuries, jade ornamentation had become increasingly codified, so that by the Han dynasty its use as a means of distinguishing one's social class was firmly entrenched.

Fewer jades survive from the centuries following the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 to the end of the Tang dynasty in 906 than from earlier or later dynasties. Changes in funerary practices meant that not as many pieces were included in tombs where they were protected from the ravages of time.

In addition, these works had not completed the transition from ritual object to cultural artwork and were not collected as they were in later dynasties. The earliest animal figures from this time of transition show something of the ritual spirit of the Han dynasty, but they soon evolve into fanciful mythical beasts and playful representations. During these centuries signs of an emerging antiquarian spirit appear in jade imitations of early metallic or ceramic objects.

Jade Chess Set

In the modern dynasties (the Ming, 1368-1644, and the Qing, 1644-1912) jadework became more self-conscious and referential. Often - as with the monkey and peaches sculpture - jades alluded to a work of literature or some other aspect of China's cultural heritage.

They might involve a sort of witticism known as a rebus. Rebuses are hidden meanings or verbal puns arising from characters that have double meanings; they usually refer to auspicious signs or wishes.

During this period, jade objects for the scholar's studio began to be produced, such as brush rests, paperweights, and seals. In keeping with the referential spirit of the modern period, such objects were sometimes made in imitation of earlier forms in other mediums, such as bronzes and lacquers.