Chinese Jade Culture

The color of jade is beautiful and its essence is solid, so jade can be made into bracelets. Warmth is a visual feeling, the material is dense, translucent to transparent. After being carved and polished, jade becomes warm, smooth and lustrous. Such characteristics are unmatched by any other natural stone.

"Water color" is unique to jadeite. We often hear the saying "wherever the dragon is, there is water". If in "Jade Appearance" it is used to describe the clever appearance of the green color, like the ingenious stroke in a peerless landscape painting, then the opposite is where the green "dragon" is not, the result is dryness, wood, and no water. Dry or wooden jade is inferior jade or even worse, and its texture is like taro or dog shit. If you see a naturally green "dragon" (it can also be called a belt), if this "dragon" belt can run through wherever it reaches, then you cannot see the trunk or the wood, but instead it will form a beautiful water (green) color. There are jade-appraising terms such as “high green appears from dog shit bottom” or “water is everywhere where there is a dragon”, which are used to describe the ingenious appearance of green, turning jade from “inferior” to supreme “beautiful”. This is a wonderful display of the power of nature.

The visual sense of "water color" refers to the high density and transparency of jade material. When you see green, you will feel water. When made into jade jewelry, it expresses the "watery" feeling that cannot be described in words and can only be felt with the heart.

Various ancient Chinese jades also have a watery feel, which is generally called "warm and moist", but it is only equivalent to the medium and low quality of white base (white texture) and blue base (blue texture) in jadeite. The warmth and wateriness of mutton-fat white jade is very high, but its transparency is only at the lower level of jadeite.

The medium and high-quality water color of jadeite is called (water green). This kind of green is presented in a natural and moderate way, that is to say, it does not appear as green blocks or green clusters, but as jade flesh gathered in the form of green silk threads at the bottom of ice or glass, allowing natural light to pass through the gaps between the green silk threads, presenting it naturally and flexibly, releasing the authentic spirit of green through transmitted light, reflected light, and refracted light. This makes people have two sensations at the same time in their subjective visual sense, one is the sensation of water, the other is the sensation of green, so people directly call it: "water green". The feeling is "beauty" and "cleverness" with a hint of "firmness" in "softness". Most of the terms mentioned in Yunnan Jade Appreciation are directly called out from spiritual induction.

The connotation of jade skin

Nature transmits information signals from objective things, and people experience them through spiritual induction. This is what we all know as "telepathy". An experienced person can interpret it instantly. This is the common language of the predecessors who have collected jadeite raw stones throughout the ages. It is the crystallization of the knowledge of jadeite that has been passed down from generation to generation in the market after verification. After five or six hundred years of accumulation, these little bits and pieces have formed the basic concepts of China's jade culture. Unfortunately, in the past hundred years, China has encountered bullying from Western powers. Britain and France forcibly occupied and colonized Indochina, seized the jade mining areas, and divided and persecuted the indigenous people. Coupled with the initial economic downturn in the country, the jade market has been unable to recover.

Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of people with lofty ideals, the research on jade has never stopped. In addition, the environment in which I live is relatively stable, so that the book "Yunnan Jade Appearance" could be published in Taiwan, China.

Each of the specialized terms mentioned in the book "Yunnan Jade Appraisal" represents the crystallization of nature's experience and evolution over millions of years. It is a cultural asset and intangible cultural heritage that is created through careful thinking and selfless knowledge transfer!

The sand-like skin of jadeite produces sand-like skin with poor texture inside the jade. There are many jade forms that are loose, rough, and flat. As the texture of the jade inside the rough jade improves, the sand hair on the outer skin also sublimates into a jade appearance that is sandy, tight, solid, rough and prickly. The poem says: "The sand is rough and the sound of my hands is like a bell." This poem elevates the empirical formula of jade identification, "the sand on the bottom will turn up and it will shine", to the spiritual scene of examining the beauty of jade. It has life, judgment, and appreciation. It is a pity that there are few of this kind of jade now. It produces delicate and warm ice-type jade, and its sand skin is particularly good and rare. Its name is "white salt sand", "lime skin", "yellow wax skin", "garlic skin" and so on. It only accounts for 1% of the jade population. Some of them are lucky enough to grow the valuable green "noble phase". Their "color type" is "pine flower", and there are many of them with green and white alternating colors. If you upgrade to larger points or clusters, such as plums and peaches, large clusters with concentrated green color are quite rare. Let’s talk about the standard “ribbon type”. This highly concentrated green color is “too highbrow” and is only a minority among the “noble appearance” of jadeite raw (skin). This is the "belt jade", the highest value term in the Yunnan jade distribution market.

The Origin of Jade Types and Colors

Another important component of the “noble appearance” is the water color of jadeite. To put it simply, the most beautiful thing is blue, but the most beautiful thing is also blue, because extreme changes create sublimation. There are a particularly large number of black blue, gray-blue, and blue bean ornaments on the market. Because they are beautiful and not expensive, they are no longer seen in the general market. They have safely entered jade jewelry stores and become consumer products sought after by high-end buyers. They are priced within a high range and are not available to ordinary people.

These "color types" and "water colors" contribute to the improvement of the "noble appearance" of jadeite, and are all carried and presented on the sandy skin of the "jade appearance", changing from the bottom to the high end, just like the sublimation from the base of a tower to the top. Like all living beings, there are many ordinary people but few outstanding ones. Most professional fortune tellers are well versed in numerology and facial features, and can tell whether a person is noble or humble. The common people of the "Yunnan tribe" or jade bosses in Tengchong, Yingjiang and other places in Yunnan can judge the various noble features of jadeite and the high or low value of the jade just like professional fortune tellers. After a long period of evolution, a new business emerged, that is, "gambling on stones". Gambling on stones is gambling on jadeite. You pay a small tuition fee in the market to gain experience, opportunities, and profits.

The first visual impression of “Blue Water Green” is “emerald green”. This is the high-end quality of jade, and also the highest-end color represented by jade in the world. Its beauty represents the supreme direction towards eternity and immortality.

The high-end colors of jadeite are judged by universal cognition and people's concept of beauty to judge the meaning of "eternal" beauty.

A Chinese proverb says: "The high is based on the low, the noble is based on the humble". The more stable the base of a tower, the higher the top of the tower can be. The top of the tower represents the glory and highest value of the base and the tower! Therefore, high-end jade represents the fusion and sublimation of the basic units of jade, 36 water (edge), 72 beans, and 108 blue, to achieve the highest achievement of beauty. It also represents the incomparable high-end colors between heaven and earth. These colors are essentially immortal!

There are also "Yangdou" and "Huangyangshuilu". "Blue-green" is the top level of visual sense, "emerald green". This is a common feature of high-end jadeite at the top of the pyramid. Jade represents both integration and differences, but it also has its own characteristics. One needs to comprehend the meaning of Chinese characters and ponder them dozens or hundreds of times before reaching the level of "unattainability". People often go to the high-end jade jewelry market to search, to seek "good fortune" and to verify the "gains and losses" in life.

In short, jade can be defined as a treasure that is hard to obtain. Only people with virtue can possess such a treasure. There are beautiful things in the vast universe, but it is so empty, as if everything does not exist. For example, the scholar who studies jade has created wealth for countless people through his lifelong exploration, but he himself can only regard wealth as floating clouds. This is the highest realm of jade, "existence" and "non-existence".

So that there is an opportunity to realize the difference between such "result" and such cause. Therefore, it is also necessary to prove that China's jade culture has reached the pinnacle of the "jade science" that has been refined by generations of predecessors in the Yunnan jade industry.

Each of the terms and words used in the interpretation of jadeite in "Yunnan Jadeology" represents tens of millions of years of natural evolution and the results of the study of China's jadeite culture with the universe as the center, namely "communication between gods and spirits".

This signal of "communication between gods" and the natural wisdom of Chinese jade culture was declared by tribal leaders in ancient times when they used jade to worship heaven and earth. Those who did not respect it would undoubtedly fail.

In ancient times, gentlemen always wore jade. This was a sacred signal from Chinese saints to pass on the value of jade to wise men. It has always been admired by ordinary people, who appreciate it, have no doubts about it, and follow it.

Zhou Jinglun is the author of "Yunnan Jade Appraisal" (the world's first monograph on jade appraisal). Together with Fu Lezhi (son of Fu Ssu-nien, the first president of National Taiwan University, who studied in England in his early years and, after returning to Taiwan, studied under Master Na Zhiliang, a national treasure jade artist at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, and has long been committed to the study of jade culture), Ma Baozhong (author of China's first jade history and culture monograph "A Study of Jade from Yunnan"), he has made positive contributions to promoting the inheritance, promotion and exchange of jade culture on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

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