Comprehensive Annotated Dictionary for Jade,
Jade-like Stones
and Other Important Stones of China

By Frank Doonan

FORWARD

Laozi once told a story about two villages on either side of a deep valley. The people in both villages could hear the dogs bark and the cock’s crow in the other village, but they grow old and die never knowing each other.

Many volumes have been written in the west concerning jade, and the museums have impressive displays of carved jade artifacts that cover thousands of years of Chinese history. But unfortunately almost all these books and displays contain many errors and mislabeled carvings. They often call almost all the carvings jade, but many of them are carved from a variety of other rocks and minerals, and not from nephrite jade or jadeite.

Many attempts at unraveling the mystery of jade have been made in the western treatments of the Orient since the 1800s. The latest is Keverne’s Jade (1995), which is an impressive, comprehensive volume covering jade and jade culture all over the world. The sections on jade from most places in the world are well done and very accurate. But the sections on China which make up over half the book and contain numerous errors. What made this even more puzzling is that these sections were written and compiled by a dozen or so authorities on jade from both the East and the West. See the bibliography in the appendix for reviews of many of the books on jade published in the West.

In the major museums of the world, like the Smithsonian and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, almost all the labels on small stone artifacts from China call them jade. But in reality, many of the Neolithic and some later carvings are not jade.

Why did this happen? I have been in China more than seven years researching jade and jade culture, and found the problem very perplexing. I found a distinct problem of translation and communication between the West and the East. In the West the concept of jade is fairly simple. Jade is the name of a group of tough semi-precious stones from two different kinds of rock called nephrite and jadeite. But in China, the concept of jade becomes confusing. Jade is most often translated as玉yù or 玉石 yùshì in dictionaries and other literature in the East and West, but unfortunately this is incorrect. Wade (1987) comes close when he describes what is meant by 玉yù or 玉石 yùshì in China, “In Chinese the word yu, which we translate as ‘jade,’ actually refers to any rock worthy of being carved. Some 30 to 40 kinds in China are called yu.” But even Wade’s definition is misleading.

Another thing that happened is that in the 19th century came the decline and then the fall of the Qing Dynasty just after the turn of the 20th century. In this transition period in China the entire language of the culture of jade dropped from use, replaced slowly with commercial interest in jade. This large chunk of the Chinese language concerning jade culture is similar to the part of the language dealing with other separate traditional disciplines like Traditional Chinese Medicine (YCM). The language of TCM remains, but the language and culture of jade was too intimately intertwined in the traditions, ritual and life of the dynasty feudal governments, and disappeared with the fall of the last dynasty. All that remain are disjoint pieces scattered in the modern Chinese language. The academic community has been neglectful and disinterested in addressing this problem.

Part of the problem lies in the indifference and neglect of western scholars toward jade in researching Chinese history. For example: Jade is only mentioned in the caption of a photograph of a relatively modern Korean style jade carving of mediocre quality in one major textbook used in American universities China – Tradition and Transformation by Fairbank and Reischauer (1989). The extensive Discovery TV series on China’s artifacts and culture likewise neglected jade.

The solution to the problem is both simple and complex. The simple part is a proper definition of the basics. First, 玉yù should not be translated as jade. The proper translation is: nephrite jade, some jade-like stones suitable for carving, and other stones with special functional properties. Second, the other jade-like stones and organic jades need to be defined as they were considered in history and the carved stone market in China today. One man-made material glass was called 玉yù in China at various times in history before the twentieth century based on their beauty, rarity, and special uses, but was later dropped when it became common.

The concept of what was and was not jade began to change in the nineteenth century with rise of trade and the wealthy merchant class. As the Qing Dynasty crumbled in the face of western colonial encroachments, jadeite became the first fashionable jade-like stone to become jade for the wealthy in China as jewelry and decorative carvings. Traditionally jadeite was considered a foreign stone; it was not considered jade in ancient China, but in this period many of the terms and attributes traditionally reserved for nephrite jade, the ‘Stone of Heaven’, were attributed to jadeite by the wealthy. The rise of the oriental mystique in the west influenced fashion and art. Jadeite, particularly the Imperial Jade cabochon with its rich translucent emerald green color became a popular precious stone for the wealthy.

As the smoke cleared from the devastating war torn China of the first half of the twentieth century China began to look for markets for local products in the west. Even during the austere times of Revolutionary reconstruction the jade and jade-like stone market began to emerge as local industries. Japanese geologists looking for new resources to exploit were actually the ones to rediscover many of the nephrite jade and jade-like stones of Taiwan and northeast China lost in the chaotic decline of Dynastic China. Taiwan mismanaged and over exploited their newly found nephrite jade deposits, but it never measured up to the nephrite of Xinjiang anyway, because of the brittleness of the stone and general mediocre quality.

After the Cultural Revolution faded the commercial jade and jade-like stone market began to emerge again, and this time the plans were more focused on developing the commercial stone carving market. The number of jade-like stones that became redefined as jade increased to four stones including the foreign jade, jadeite from Myanmar. The plan was to redefine jade for a commercial domestic and foreign trade market. The precious national heritage, ‘The Stone of Heaven’ was still treasured, but not publicly marketed in the domestic and export markets. Different groups and types of stones were marketed differently. The jade-like stones, bowenite, sausserite, jadeite, and aventurine were to be marketed as jade. Priority was given to the more abundant domestic stone resources such as the bowenite and saussaurite. The agalmatolites were marketed as special decorative carvings and name-seal stones, but not called jade. The microcrystalline silicates such as the agates and jaspers were not targeted for marketing and generally not called jade, because of their limited resources in China. There are literally mountains of bowenite, but the agate deposits were more limited and many are mined out. Agate is even imported in large quantities from Brazil to meet the demands of the carving market.

The next part is a bit complicated, as it involves sorting out and translating the meaning and use of hundreds of characters and words dealing with jade, other stones and jade culture in China. This is complicated by the loss of historical records in wars and literary purges.

This volume is the first of a series on jade and jade culture, which represents an attempt to ‘pick up the pieces’ and clear up most of the confusion concerning the nature of jade and jade culture in the written word throughout China’s history. It is an important first step, because without this foundation, truly understanding the role of jade in China’s history is nearly impossible. Because of the confusion and complexity of the concept of jade and jade culture in China, this work includes most of the characters and many of the words for not only jade, but also for the other rocks and minerals important in Chinese jewelry, cosmetics, music and medicine. Because of the complexity of this work this project will continue for a long time with the addition of better definitions and more characters and words.

·0.0 – INTRODUCTION
·1.0 –What is jade
·10.0 – BIBLIOGRAPHY