Part One: Late Prehistoric China   Table of Contents | Start Section
More about   Archaeology, Jade, Early Pottery Production

More about Jade

In Chinese culture, jade is held in the highest esteem, much as gold is in the West. Jade symbolizes such virtues as durability, beauty, and refinement. Confucius compared the work required to produce jade objects with the long years needed to form an educated person. Hundreds of Chinese words connoting beauty, wealth, and power incorporate the graph for the word "jade" as a radical, or root.

The Chinese word yu encompasses both jade (nephrite and jadeite) and other jadelike stones. The ancient Chinese worked nephrite, which they probably quarried from areas along the east coast. Jadeite began to be used only much later, in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911 A.D.). Both minerals are extremely hard. They cannot be cut and the surface can only be shaped through abrasion. Ancient jade workers would have used bamboo drills and quartzite crystals mixed with water to grind the stone slowly into desired shapes.

Although jade is tough, it is also very brittle and can shatter, making it unsuitable for most tools. Nor can jade objects be mass-produced the way pottery vessels or even bronzes can. Jade's value was symbolic rather than practical. Hard to obtain, difficult to work, and beautiful to look at and touch, jade suggested power and prestige, and its permanence came to be associated with immortality.

Late Prehistoric China | Bronze Age China | Chu and Other Cultures | Early Imperial China

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