Jade

Chinese Jade From Ancient Times To The Present
Neolithic jades - such as the bi discs and cong tubes described above -- are often found in burial sites, suggesting a ritual signidicance. 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. 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. This anticipates an important trend in China from the Song dynasty (960-1279) onward.
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. Or 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.
Colored Stone
The Chinese traditional myth tells of humans struggling to survive beset by wild beasts, with no way to defend themselves. The storm god took pity on humankind and carved a rainbow into jade weapons and tools, scattering them along the rivers for humans to find. Another story tells of jade stones forming where the beautiful legendary bird feng huang lands. Yet another tells of the more sensual vision of jade. It describes the essence of jade forming as concentrations of yang or masculine force, found only by the attraction to the essence of yin when collected by naked young women wading in the rivers on nights when the moon is full.
Jade has held a fascination for the Chinese since it was first made into tools over 7,000 years ago. From those humble beginnings, it became the stone of choice for ceremonies, royal funerals, and personal items. Specialized jade carving technologies were discovered and refined, leading to the rise of jade carving clans and trade throughout China. Its unique qualities inspired legends, and jade is still revered today throughout much of Asia.
For most of Chinese history, the focus of the mystery and admiration was on nephrite jade, whose beauty, toughness, and unique qualities made it a favorite among carvers. The character of nephrite jade became the standard by which great men, governments, and beautiful women were judged. The gem became known as the "Stone of Heaven," and it was treasured above all else in the Middle Kingdom.
But how did jade achieve such lofty status? To answer that, you have to go back to the beginning.
Most Stone Age cultures all over the world that had access to jade used it to some extent in making weapons, tools, ceremonial icons, or ornamental items. The relative scarcity of jade and the difficulty in working the material prevented it from being the dominant tool and weapon-making material. But that same rarity - combined with its beauty and toughness - made it ideal for ceremonial and funerary ritual practices and prized personal possessions.
The desire for jade spread beyond the areas where it was mined, inspiring trade over long distances and the development of specialized industries to carve the stone. These developments are key hallmarks in the beginning of civilization in China.
Many sources trace the evolution of civilization through the development of writing. But while the first known writing in China dates to approximately 2800 B.C., jade culture - the technology, social structures, and trade that support the jade industry - was established around 5000 B.C. The silk industry, also associated with the development of Chinese civilization, emerged at about the same time in Hubei Province, just north of the Yellow River. In China, then, writing followed the development of a sophisticated culture, not the other way around.
The discovery of nephrite jade in east central China, near Suzhou, was critical in the evolution of jade culture. The Chinese had already developed exceptional skill in the detailed carving of many materials, such as bone, wood, ivory, and other stones. Those techniques served as a starting point for refining the advanced carving methods used with nephrite.
The Hemudu-Liangzhu cultures (5000-2250 B.C.), inhabiting the lower Yangtze River coastal plain in the area around Suzhou, were the first to develop jade culture. Three of their major cities, Yangzhou, Suzhou, and Hangzhou, were the major centers for jade carving in the later dynasties and remain so today. It is a distinct possibility that the jade carving clans of this region have the oldest family-preserved technology in the world, going back more than 7,000 years.
The Hemudu-Liangzhu were primarily an agricultural people, and in fact are credited with the first cultivation of rice. Like most agricultural societies, an important part of their lives was maintaining a good relationship with the gods, spirits, and ghosts of their ancestors. To stay in their ancestors' good graces, they developed more and more elaborate ceremonies to honor the dead, with specialized ritual tools and images. Tough, rare, and beautiful, jade was an ideal choice for creating those ritual items.
Most of the carvings were of two types. The first were ceremonial and funerary objects evolved from farm implements, tools, and weapons. The second were carvings of animals like pigs, birds, and mythical dragons.
The most common of the ritual objects were called bi, yuan, and huan. These are round disks with a hole of varying widths in the center. The bi, with the smallest hole, later became a Chinese coin.
If the circular object had a slit in one side it was called a jue. Other variations on the round theme were the huang, a crescent-shaped artifact that sometimes had a hole at each end, and the cong, a hollow cylinder with squared corners.
Axe carvings were common, as were tools that evolved from the adz and tilling blades. The dao, gui, and zhang were long, flat, rectangular tools with a cutting edge on one end, while ceremonial knife blades were called xi and gi.
What these implements were used for is not clear. However, because they had no evidence of wear, such as scarring or chipping, scholars theorize that their purpose was for display or ceremony rather than for actual use as a tool.
The animal carvings were of two types, adult and immature forms. Many of the animal carvings found in tombs are in pairs, with the most important funerary carvings being pigs and dragons. Pigs were an important farm animal in the agrarian cultures of this period, and the dragon was already being worshipped as a totem animal in parts of China.
The immature forms were very important funerary carvings in the Late Stone Age. Other carvings used the embryonic, fetal and larval forms of animals and insects, while some combined the characteristics of different animals and insects. Animal carvings used in funerary ceremonies were often broken in half, a practice which began in the Late Stone Age and later became widespread. While the significance of this action is not certain, it is thought that the breaking symbolizes death, while the embryonic forms represent rebirth in the next life.
Recent inventories of archeological sites in the Yangtze River coastal plain - where the jade carving clans lived - indicate a progressive favoring of nephrite jade for the most important ceremonial and funerary practices after 5000 B.C.
The preference for nephrite inspired the search for the stone beyond Suzhou, and there is evidence that Late Stone Age cultures used jade from the far northeastern corner of China, near the Heilongjiang River and Siberia. Traditional bi and yuan jade carvings have been found on an island in Lake Baikal, Russia, dating from between 4000 B.C. and 2000 B.C. Influence and possibly trade extended as far as the region around Hong Kong, over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) to the south, where cong of Liangzhu design have been found.
From the Yangtze River coastal plain, jade culture spread north to the lower Yellow and Huai River valleys with the Dawenkou-Longshan cultures. The Dawenkou-Longshan cultures (ca. 4500 B.C. to 1900 B.C.) were roughly contemporary with the Hemud-Liangzhu. They were much more spread out, however, occupying the coastal plain in modern-day Shandong, Henan, Anhui, and Jiangssu provinces. Better known for their black ceramic ware, the Dawenkou-Longshan most likely imported carving techniques as well as the jade itself from the Hemudu-Liang-zhu jade clans.
Beginning around 2100 B.C., the center of power and culture shifted east with the development of the Erlitou culture and the advent of the Bronze Age. Mineral resources for making bronze are more abundant in the mountains of central China, where the Erlitou lived, and they prospered as a result.
Like jade, bronze was initially valued for its hardness, especially in making weapons. It was later chosen to create ritual versions of everyday objects, and was prized for its appearance. The use of bronze tools also greatly improved the technology of jade carving.
The Erlitou produced jade carvings, but the styles and types were predominantly those of the Liangzhu and Longshan cultures.
The Hemudu-Liangzhu carvings formed the basis for the jade ceremonial and funerary objects used throughout the dynastic history of China. Some of the most important ceremonial carvings used in later eras, until as late as 1911, were likely collected and handed down from these ancient cultures.
A jade bas relief from the Robin Turner Gallery, photo courtesy the Arts of Pacific Asia show.
Despite what is reported in most contemporary references and museum displays, not all of the beautiful carvings of the Late Stone Age to Early Bronze Age were what we today call jade. Before about 5000 B.C., the local cultures used limited amounts of nephrite, primarily for utilitarian and ornamental purposes. Jade was highly valued because it was much tougher than the materials used before that date.
In northeastern China, the dominant stone was serpentine until after 2000 B.C. In the eastern and central regions some jade carvings have been found, but mostly they used agalmatolite, serpentine, chalcedony, agate, and turquoise. Because at that time the only source of jade was in Suzhou, trade with that region is the only plausible explanation for jade artifacts from central China.
It is likely that the earliest cultures honed their abilities on softer stones like serpentine, and slowly developed the skills and techniques to carve the harder, more durable nephrite. The development of sophisticated abrasion and drilling techniques for carving jade in the Late Neolithic period parallels the growth in technology and a clan structure that handed down the skills from generation to generation. Many of these techniques are the same ones used by the traditional jade artisans today.
Fetal-larval form pendant with a pig's head and segmented body.
Fetal pig or dragon carving, mostly found in pairs in tombs of the Hongshan Culture; illustrations by Frank Doonan.
It was the early jade carvers who ultimately determined what, of all the stones that were given that title, would be considered true jade.
Some give the credit to scholars like Confucius for first defining jade based on the human qualities of justice, honesty, integrity, and the soft, sensual touch of a beautiful woman's skin. Other say the kings, emperors, and their most trusted advisors determined the standards for the "Stone of Heaven."
Confucius gathered the wisdom and knowledge from all over the Middle Kingdom as a scholar, not as an authority on stone. The emperors and kings appreciated the beauty of jade's subtle colors, delicate rich carving, and its soft, silky feel, but they often confused other stones with jade. It was the carving clans of the lower Yangtze River coastal plain that determined which stones were not too hard, too soft, or too brittle, and which were suitable to be called the "Stone of Heaven."
The carvers could separate nephrite jade from other stones because of its unique properties. Nephrite is neither very hard nor very soft, with a hardness of 6.0 to 6.8 on the Mohs scale, but its unique interlocking fibrous structure makes it the toughest natural stone in the world. Rocks and minerals that are harder than jade tend to be more brittle, and poorly suited for detailed carving. Jade is soft enough to be shaped and polished by abrasion with common silica stones and minerals like quartz. The feel of polished nephrite, often compared to the touch of a woman's skin, is also a unique quality that contributed to the legends and folklore of jade.
Nephrite's toughness, subtle beauty, and sensual feel remained the enduring symbol of the middle way of Chinese culture until the fall of the last dynasty in 1911.
Up until recently, civilization in China was believed to have come from early cultures in the upper and middle Yellow River valley. It has been proposed, however, that advanced Stone Age cultures evolved independently in different regions, and Chinese civilization developed from the "mutual contacts and influences" of these cultures.
Other Stone Age groups may have contributed to the development of the Chinese culture that emerged during the dynasties that followed, but the Hemudu-Liangzhu region is likely the cradle of Chinese civilization. Jade culture itself provides the evidence: They must have had relatively advanced technology to produce their jade icons, and the fact that their carvings are the blueprint for most of the jade works that followed shows the influence of their culture. In contrast, very few of the distinctive carving styles of the other cultures continued into the dynasty period of Chinese history.
Jade occupied the heart of artistry and ritual from the beginning of Chinese civilization, and from there its popularity only grew. It would become one of the defining elements of a nation that for thousands of years represented the epitome of Asian culture.
While jade is a constant in Chinese culture, politics and power are not. Part 2 of this article will discuss the role of jade and jade culture through the Bronze Age, as the dynastic system rose.

What is Jade and how is it used
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 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.
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.
"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.
How is Jade earved?
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.
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).