An illustration of the polysemiosis of jade as a sign vehicle in traditional Chinese culture – an exemplar of formal and essential intuition

1 Introduction

Sign is defined as the “abstract class of all sensually perceivable signals that refer to the same object or state of affairs in the real world,” while semiotics is defined as the “study of signs within the frame work of social life (Bussmann 2000: 425, 433),” and “the study of the social production of meaning from the sign system (O’Sullivan et al. 1994: 281).” It follows that semiotics is innately related to social culture and that “socially” produced meaning is actually the core concern of semiotics. According to Burke (1966: 22–23), the world is meaningfully impossible without semiosis based on the referential frame and sign system, and both the frame and the system cannot be limited to the realms of logics, mathematics, and science as stipulated by analytical language philosophy, for it also contains the realm of social culture and convention. This means the semiotic interpretation of meaning is in a mode of tripartite relation among world, sign, and sign-user instead of a bipartite relation between language and world.

As semiosis is essential for human beings, Cassirer (1944) defines humankind as an “animal symbolicum”; meanwhile the world perceived by human consciousness is not the world-in-itself but a humanized or conceptualized world, which indicates that the semiotization of a thing as a sign vehicle is a sine qua non of semiosis or meaning-production activity. Moreover, semiosis in the conceptualized world is dynamically open, making it quite possible or even natural that a sign can trigger heterogeneous or contradictory interpretations even in the same cultural context, resulting in “the vortex” of meaning interpretation or entropy change in semiosis. According to the principle of thermodynamics, the entropy of an isolated thermodynamic system always increases because the system’s initial condition has lower entropy than the equilibrium state, and semiotic entropy change exists in the same mechanism along the epistemological evolution, in which the meaning of signification proliferates and accumulates along with the multiplication of signifying activities concerning any single thing-sign or sign vehicle. Like mass and energy, the physical or material references of a sign vehicle maintain the state of conservation as the universal natural law, but its semiotic references keep the principle of entropy increase as a universal cultural law. In a closed system, entropy always increases until it reaches a stage when no more energy is supplied; thus, the system maintains an internal state of stagnation. Meanings in any semiosis follow the same rule, but a difference lies in that entropy in thermodynamics can decrease or even die out without the input of sustaining energy, while in semiotics, when entropy reaches its maximum, it is sealed up in suspension and does not decrease or die out unless desemiotization takes place or the culture in which the semiosis happens dies out.

In the light of Wittgenstein’s theory of language games, sign meaning should be multifarious in pragmatic cultural contexts, expressing concepts, presenting intentions, evoking feelings, stimulating or obstructing actions, and so forth (Yang 2022). From the perspective of cultural semiotics, sign-interpretation begins with formal intuition, which is necessarily partial because certain aspects of the sign under interpretation are absent or suspended, depending on the interpretive context and the intentionality of the interpreter (Zhao 2017b). The meaning that emerges is often more symbolic than positivistic, contrasting with the categorical imperative in analytical philosophy that meaning must be verifiable through physicalism and scientism.

The mythological and religious realm of jade is the original universe of ancient Chinese social culture and institution, which Ye (2015, 2019) regards as the prime or major tradition in Chinese cultural evolution. According to the archaeological record (Lin 1992), jade was the object initially used in religious and secular rites and ceremonies, such as sacrifices, diplomatic alliances among vassals, and the recruiting and appointment of loyal courtiers or virtuous scholars in ancient China. Yet, as recorded in “Ritual and devotion” (Wu 2024), the origin of jade adoration lies in empiricism, that is, in the synesthetic aestheticism of jade rooted in the ancient Chinese agricultural reverence for animal fat. This suggests that the visual and tactile perception of the mildness and moist luster of animal fat motivated the metaphorical analogy between jade (as the tenor) and the virtues of gentlemen (as the vehicle). In fact, as ritualistic instruments, jade wares are to a large extent detached from their material and pragmatic function as opposed to pottery and other practical utensils and tools in social production and daily life. However, jade had been semiotized since very ancient times in Chinese culture to signify and convey miscellaneous convictions of a spiritual, political, moral, and ethical nature, among others (Todorov 1984: 15–30).

The semiosis of jade in its inception is composed of a tripartite synergy of mythos, ethos, and pathos, and corresponds to Geert Hofstede’s “onion” model of cultural organization (2010) of which the four parts from inside to outside are values, rituals, heroes, symbols. The Chinese semiosis of jade is rooted in a primitive mindset and thinking pattern, which according to Lévy-Bruhl has a “mystical, creative, and multidimensional aspect that transcends the linear type of logic in rational thinking; […] rather than using logical categories, it uses a ‘law of participation,’ governing supersensible forces” (NEW 2025). In other words, the primitive mind is both “pre-logical” and mythical, the distinction of the material and the spiritual dimensions being not maintained, and it “uses ‘mystical participation’ to manipulate the world” (NEW 2025). On the basis of this mindset, the myth of jade arises, evolves into a religion as the foundation of Taoism, distills into the secular ideology of feudalism, and achieves its cultural zenith in Confucianism, which determines that the interpretation of jade’s semiosis is bound to be multimodal and multiperspectival.

2 Multiple perspectives of semiotic interpretation

In Zhao’s opinion (Zhao 2022: 3), Peirce’s definition of sign as “something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity” (Peirce 1931–1958: 2.228) only adds a receptive dimension to the dictionary definition that a sign is the “abstract class of all sensually perceivable signals that refer to the same object or state of affairs in the real world” (Bussmann 2000: 433). Zhao (2022: 55) therefore refined the definition of sign as “a sensory entity to be regarded as carrying meaning,” and semiotics as “the formal study of meaning-making,” that is, mainly meaning communication and interpretation. To Nöth (1990: 12), semiotics is a semantic field of multifaceted relevance to linguistics, logic, rhetoric, hermeneutics, aesthetics, poetics, nonverbal communication studies, and epistemology. Nöth also asserts (1994: 5) that the origin of semiosis is “biogenesis” and “sociogenesis,” and therefore, Zhao (2009: 169) claims that since semiotics is the common denominator of the humanities and social sciences, its primary area of relevance lies in cultural studies.

In Peirce’s semiotic theory, motivatedness or conventionality renders signification open, as is exhibited by his three categories of triads: representamen–object–interpretant, icon–index–symbol, firstness–secondness–thirdness (Liszka 1994: 20–35). The materiality of a sign, being the only attribute directly perceived by human senses, is the material aspect upon and in which lies its semiotic foundation and which contains the holistic semiotic information and meaning. On this material base and out of this holistic semantic source, countless signifying activities of cognition and interpretation are derived. Zhang (2024) believes the ontological aspect of sign should be explored from this perspective, and the designation of “ontological sign” is closely related to “firstness” in Peirce’s semiotic thought. Peirce’s logic–rhetoric model expands semiotics toward the nonverbal realm, in which the interpretant becomes the starting point for infinite semiosis, therefore breaking the closure of Saussure’s model. In fact, thing-sign does not merely represent the thing itself as a signified, but also represents the cultural significance as the product of an interpretant, integrating cultural denotation and connotations.

Lotman’s idea of semiosphere, inspired by the concept of the “biosphere,” explains the landscape of human culture from a spatial perspective, with a comprehensive vision (Lotman 2001: 123–135 ). The semiosphere is a macro and holistic depiction of the cultural space and provides both metalanguage and experience for semiotic activities (Lotman 1978: 211–232). The concept of the semiosphere is influenced by the tradition of structuralist thought, such as Saussurean linguistics, Russian formalism, and French anthropology. It is also influenced by systems theory and information theory, which renders it multilayered and structured. According to Lotman (2005), the semiosphere is an abstract space in the sense of a metaphor, which supports consciousness in human semiosis, i.e., it is the carrier and conveyor of meaning, the channel and way of information transmission, and members in a semiosphere share the semiotic encoding system and hence are able to participate all its activities of semiosis. Moreover, the semiosphere has diachronic depth, as it possesses a complex memory system. It functions as a social framework, or realm of cultural memory, and helps construct what Assmann (2007: 6) refers to as the “cohesive structure of a society,” on which the meaning system of a society is based. According to Lotman (2010: 296–309), the primary issue of semiotics is not the relationship between the content and expression of signs, but the relationship between the internal sign system and the external real world, while Saussurean linguistics, focusing on synchronic analysis, abandons the dimension of historical and cultural development and change of signs, and interprets signs through the inner and structuralist relationship of language. Based on the relation between the static state and the dynamic state, Lotman emphasizes the metabolism in semiosis through which absorption and elimination of elements happen constantly in the semiotic mechanism and process, maintaining synchronic structurality and diachronic evolution at the same time. He suggests that culture regulates the external world by replicating structures through its internal mechanism (Zylko 2001: 391–400). Meanwhile, it depends on its deconstructing function to maintain its dynamic operation, and hence the mechanism of both stability and de-stability supports a culture’s development and dynamic balance, or a culture’s langue and parole (Merrell 2001: 395–412).

Interpreting in the light of Lotman’s cultural semiotics and semiosphere, jade as thing-sign or sign vehicle in traditional Chinese culture combines noncultural and cultural characteristics, the former of which is “primordial,” “innate,” and “natural,” and the latter “designated,” “conventional,” and “human-experience-condensing.” Analyzed from this angle, jade faith as an ancient religion in China is the cultural product of edification and derivation of nature through the core sign vehicle “jade” as “Ding an sich,” which conforms to the Chinese philosophical thought of “harmony between nature and human being.”

Interpretation of semiotic activities does not merely involve language and cognition, but also encompasses meanings and value potential in cultural phenomena, which leads the analysis of semiosis to the theoretical argument and negotiation between Peircean and Husserlian phenomenology. A key term in this negotiation is “intuition,” which as a mode of subjective cognition is directly related to the sensory impressions and the subjective receptivity of objects (Silverman: 1998: 15–30). Hence in Kantian texts, intuition is termed “sensory intuition.” Intuition possesses the ability to actively direct attention at objects, which is reflected in the intentionality of intuitive cognitive activities. Seen from a Kantian perspective, intuition as mere pure sensory form in a priori perception is passive and unified, and as cognition deepens, it increasingly takes on functional roles. Intuition is the rudiment of a prior schema with the “least conceptual hue” and the tendency toward sensory aggregation, which is being able to combine empirical data and heterogeneous concepts. However, the Husserlian concept of essential intuition or ideation emphasizes the “a priori cognition” of objects by the transcendental self; according to Husserl (2000: 84–85), the essence of things is the categorical and formal correlation between things, not the empirical summary of things, and it presents the nature of the structure of consciousness and the natural connection between consciousness and objects, which is specified as intentionality. So Husserlian essential intuition is the categorical and formal correlation between things in human cognition, which is not summarized from subjective experiences of things, but from the self-evident knowledge derived from the structure of human consciousness, whose intrinsic quality is its direct link with objects. Based on this concept, Husserl in his interpretation of semiosis performs a phenomenological reduction of signs focusing on the subjective choice and construction of signs on the foundation of philosophical research of consciousness, which means that his interpretation of semiosis in a Kantian a priori mode relies not on concrete sign phenomena but on the construction of objects by consciousness (Zong 2017: 19).

Husserl’s semiotics is a retrospective study of the logic of consciousness without incorporating the perspective of sociocultural analysis (Zhao 2015: 19), but it is the interaction between human consciousness and natural world that creates the sphere of meaning, which explains Zhao’s definition of sign as “the meaning-carrying perception” (2012: 3), and his distinction that while phenomenology studies how consciousness constructs meaning, semiotics researches how meaning is generated and interpreted, with phenomenology focusing on consciousness and tending toward ontology and metaphysics, and semiotics focusing on meaning itself and tending toward formalism and methodology (2017b: 2–3). In contrast with Husserl, Peirce, in his phenomenology or phaneroscopy, is concerned with the forms of meaning and lays a speculative foundation for semiotics in exploring how consciousness understands phenomena; to him, all meanings are expressed by signs and all signs express meaning, which is different form Husserl in that the latter believes that a sign emerges only after essential intuition needs to be expressed, and not necessarily carried by consciousness in the course of perception (Peirce 1940: 99–108). Hence, intuitive acts and semiotic acts could be different activities, depending on whether the object is totally represented symbolically, intuitively, or in a mixed manner (Zhao 2017b: 68).In fact, in Husserl’s two categories of sign, Anzeichen and Ausdrücke, the former can be meaningless.

Zhao (2017a: 6) points out that limiting sign to representation narrows its extension, which is the divergence between Peirce’s phaneroscopy and Husserl’s phenomenology, and he further claims that at the stage of meaning being generated through formal intuition, there is no distinction between signs and things as sign vehicles. He summarizes that while Husserlian phenomenology is devoted to consciousness, semiotics is devoted to meaning. Philosophical semiotics attends to the relationship between consciousness and meaning, i.e., the meaning within consciousness and the consciousness within meaning, and Zhao insists that while phenomenology merely concentrates on the generation of meaning through human consciousness, semiotics represents, interprets, and constructs meaning through interaction among the material world, human consciousness, and semiosis (2017a: 8).

Semiosis is the relation between the manifested aspects revealed by perception or the co-occurring aspects revealed by apperception and the absent aspects of a thing as sign vehicle or thing-sign; this process of manifestation and co-occurrence in formal intuition lays the foundation in which indexicality is the basic feature, followed by iconicity and symbolicity. The significance and interpretation of indexicality concerns both the present and the absent aspects relating to both perception and apperception. Referring to Kantian theory, apperception, being innate not acquired and verified, is the essential mode of semiosis and cognition of the human being as “animal symbolicum.” Therefore, Zhao claims that the most fundamental semiotic activities based on Kantian a priori synthetic knowledge require the indexical relation between manifestation and co-occurrence of objects as thing-signs, which means that indexicality indicating basic association in semiosis belongs to the “firstness” stipulated in Peircean semiotic phenomenology. In contrast, the identified significance and interpretation of iconicity depends on experience stored and accumulated in repeatable semiotic activities of social communication in which identified intentionality is involved (Zhao 2017b: 20–22); in the same vein, symbol^[1] is a special type of sign signifying complex and abstract meaning or an idea which is justified by “pragmatic motivation” accumulated in repeatable language use and culture communication, and hence it is suggested that Lacan’s term of “symbolic order” be interpreted as “world of sign,” for it is a guiding order governing human activities (Zhao 1990: 11). According to Peirce, the semiosis of symbol has always been a matter of convention, and hence symbol is conventional sign (Johansen 2002: 51).

The cultural representation, interpretation, and narrative in the historical semiosis of jade transits from the belief system of religion to the secular system of political ideology in Chinese traditional culture, both of which necessitate and exhibit the appropriate integration of phenomenology and semiotics including semiosphere and philosophical semiotics, which forms a hermeneutic methodology containing multiperspectives from metaphysics, ontology, and formalism, although the basic interpretation follows the Peircean triad mode of index, icon, and symbol.

3 The semiotic phylogeny and multiple semiosis of jade in traditional Chinese culture

3.1 Semiotic phylogeny of the Chinese character for jade in form and meaning

As pictograms, Chinese characters originate in drawings, expressing meanings by direct graphic depiction of things and objects, and in the course of evolution, strokes and radicals come into being. The combination of these strokes and radicals both complicates the form and increases the vocabulary of Chinese characters, which have undergone continuous change, from inscriptions on oracle bones or tortoise shells (jia gu wen), bronze inscriptions (jin wen), clerical scripts (li shu), and regular scripts (kai shu) until becoming the simplified characters currently used in mainland China.^[2] Both the shapes and writing styles of Chinese characters have been changing, carrying and recording the historical and cultural information of Chinese social development, which can properly illustrate and be properly interpreted by the Peircean semiotic mode, especially the semiotic triad: icon–index–symbol. In the Analytical dictionary of Chinese characters (Shuo Wen Jie Zi), the Chinese character for jade “玉” is analyzed as follows. In jia gu wen,^[3] the pictograph of this character is inscribed as a string of jade pieces (as is shown by Form A in Figure 1), and later in jin wen the number of jade pieces on the string was reduced to three (as shown in Figure 1, forms B and C). The annotation observes that the string of three jade discs denotes the integration of heaven, the earth, and humanity, signifying the original Chinese Weltanschauung of the oneness of man, nature, and the universe. This is later further expounded into the fundamental philosophical stipulation of both Taoism by Chuang Tzu (c.36–286 BCE) and Confucianism by Mencius (c.372–289 BCE).

Figure 1:

The evolution of the Chinese character for “king” (source: Xu 2014: 1441–1442).

In jia gu wen, the pictograph for “king” resembles a large axe or hatchet chopping downward, a weapon of execution, symbolizing the monarch and his power; in the Shang dynasty, a stroke was added to the top. Later, in the Zhou dynasty, this pictograph evolved into three horizontal strokes connected by a vertical stroke. Thus, the forms of the characters for “king” and “jade” began to look similar, although the top two horizontal strokes of the former being closer together distinguishes it from the latter, in which the three horizontal strokes are at an even distance, as shown in Figures 1 and 2.

Figure 2:

The evolution of the Chinese character for “jade” (source: Xu 2014: 1806–1807).

In li shu ^[4] and kai shu,^[5] a distinguishing mark in the form of a dot was added on the right side of the last stroke to differentiate the character for “jade” from the character for “king,”^[6] thus changing “王” into “玉,” which is the original version of the modern form of the Chinese character for “jade.”

The iconicity of the earliest form of the Chinese character for “jade” and its signifying denotation is inherited and evolved in the further stipulation and exegesis of the I Ching (Book of changes): The heaven and the earth, signified by the top and bottom horizontal lines in the character’s form, are re-represented and re-signified by the first and the second signs of the “Eight Trigrams” (ba gua) ^[7] and the equivalent two of the sixty “hexagram images” (gua xiang), which are termed qian and kun respectively.

Qian (in Chinese “乾”), with the trigram and the hexagram (see Table 1) as the semiotic image of heaven, signifies vastness and force, robustness and integrity, and the origin and source of all things. As its sign is composed only of the solid or “yang” line (vs. the broken or “yin” line), it is purely yang (opposite to yin)^[8] and symbolizes all things or principles of yang. In social cultural exegesis, qian also symbolizes the social roles played by the male, father, and the monarch, as well as decisive and vigorous ways of doing things. On the whole, Qian signifies vigor and vitality, guides the movement of heaven and creates its impact, and all things owe their existence to it, since it represents the operation of heaven. Kun (in Chinese “坤”) is represented by the trigram and the hexagram (see Table 1). It embodies the earth, which bears all things with infinite expansion, and gives birth to and nurtures all things; at the same time, it follows the Way of Heaven or Tao in Lao Tseu’s term and is gentle in nature. Its sign being composed only of broken or “yin” lines, it is purely yin and symbolizes all things or principles of yin. In social cultural exegesis, kun symbolizes female roles, mother, and the subjects of rulers, as well as gentle, kind, and generous dispositions or ways of doing things. On the whole, kun signifies gentleness, receptivity, inclusiveness, and all things owe their existence to kun in that it represents the way of heaven. In summary, qian and kun embody two fundamental forces in ancient Chinese cosmology: the creativity of heaven and the fertility of the earth. And with qian signifying initiative and action in yang and kun signifying potentiality and nurturance in yin, the complementation and interplay of yin and yang encompasses both natural and social phenomena and maintains the dynamic balance in nature and society. Qian or yang edifies ancient Chinese to understand the nature of change, and kun or yin the importance of maintaining stability and compliance amid changes, out of which comes the original concept of yin–yang balance and interaction in Chinese philosophy and medicine.

Table 1:

The trigrams and hexagrams of kun and qian, and the hexagram tai (source: KCCTC, s.v. “kun,” “qian,” and “tai”).

Trigram of qian (“乾”)
Trigram of kun (“坤”)
Hexagram of qian (“乾”)
Hexagram of kun (“坤”)
Hexagram of tai (“泰”)

3.2 The semiosis of jade in religious and secular mythos and eidos of the traditional Chinese culture

Mythos and eidos^[9] provide a convenient and appropriate perspective for the illustration and interpretation of the holistic semiosis of jade in the cultural narration of ancient China. The significance of jade is deeply embedded in the spiritual and philosophical beliefs that have shaped Chinese civilization over thousands of years. As is recorded in jia gu wen, jade as the medium intermingling the vital forces of both the divine and the earthly realms signifies the “heaven–earth–humanity” trinity and the harmony of the trinity, which in the view of the ancient Chinese is vividly signified by the physical properties and attributes of jade. The vigor and strength of heaven is signified by the firmness and solidness of jade, the nurturance and steadiness of the earth by the warmth and mildness of jade, and the harmony of the trinity by the smoothness and gentleness of jade. Therefore, jade is believed by the ancient Chinese to possess the telepathic divinity. It is used as the sacrificial offering and as the communion medium between humans and divinity in religious rites and ceremonies. As the typical material incarnation of the mythos of the ancient Chinese nation, jade also lays the solid foundation for their jade-worshipping psychology. In Taoism, a divine domain of jade is created in which all spaces are built with jade, as is recorded in the Chinese idioms “琼楼玉宇” (premises and spaces of jade) and “玄都玉京” (empyrean capital of jade). These are the dwelling places of immortals reigned over by the “Jade Emperor” (玉帝), the Supreme Deity of heaven and the central figure in Taoist religion whose role transcends the mere governance of the realm of the immortals. The Supreme Deity not only presides over a complex celestial bureaucracy of numerous deities and spirits responsible for the systematic functioning of the heaven and the earth, but also maintains cosmic order and Tao. In ancient Chinese culture, Tian (heaven) is a sacred and fundamental concept and realm which possesses an anthropomorphic will and governs all. This was piously observed by the ancient Chinese and thus cultivated and guided their eidos of social order and ethics. In this concept and realm, Tao or the way of heaven is sanctified as the ontological source of both the overarching laws operating in the three realms of universe, nature, and human society and the universal patterns followed by the three realms. The fundamental proposition in ancient Chinese philosophy is that heaven, nature, and humanity are unified in oneness and share the same principles. This tripartite unity is significant, as it allows humans to discern the heavenly way of arranging worldly affairs, to follow the harmonious laws of nature, to bask in the nourishment and revelation of heaven and earth, and finally to achieve and promote the eudemonia of humanity.

Based on this worldview that emphasizes the tripartite integration and inherent relationship of the three realms, the consciousness and concept of ritual and primeval religion germinates very early in ancient Chinese social culture, as is shown by the evolution of the Chinese character for ritual “礼” (li) illustrated in Figure 3. In jia gu wen, the inceptive form of 礼 is a simplified drawing showing two strings of jade held by a container called “豆” (dou)^[10] in sacrificial ceremonies (Figure 3A). Later a radical was added (see Figure 4) to indicate the sacred site of worship and sacrifice (Figure 3B). The form of this character continues to change (Figure 3C–E), and its meaning continues to expand, resulting in a general term for “social norms which regulate an individual’s relationship with other people, with everything else in nature, and with ghosts and spirits” (Xu 2014: 50–52).

Figure 3:

The evolution of the Chinese character for “ritual” (source: Xu 2014: 50–52).

Figure 4:

The evolution of the radical “示” (shi) (source: Li 2025, s.v. “示 [shi]”).

In the record of the Rites of Zhou, the ritualistic instruments made of jade are considered divine and implemented in various ways early in the Neolithic Age.^[11] By setting various regulations about ceremonial instruments, rituals, and systems, 礼defines an individual’s specific status and the corresponding duty and authority, and functions as the means of ordering the social interrelationship among people and achieving harmony between humanity and nature (Zheng and Jia, 2014: 120–130, 350–370).^[12]

The ancient Chinese ritual worship of heaven and earth and the paying of homage to the four spatial orientations officially began in the Zhou dynasty (1122–221 BCE), employing six sacrificial offerings that were all made of jade of different shapes and colors (Figure 5). Yu bi (Figure 5-1) is a disc-shaped piece of jade that is indigo or dark green in color. It was used as the sacrificial offering in worshipping heaven. Yu cong (Figure 5-2) is a yellow-colored piece of jade with a circular inner well carved in an outer square. It was used in worshipping the earth. Figures 5-3 to 5-6 were used in ceremonies to pay homage to the four spatial orientations of east, west, south, and north respectively. The first of these, yu gui (Figure 5-3), is an obelisk-shaped piece of jade that is indigo in color. The second, yu zhang (Figure 5-4), is a tablet-shaped piece of dark-red jade. The third, yu hu (Figure 5-5), is a piece of white jade in the shape of a tiger. And finally, yu huang (Figure 5-6) is a semicircular-shaped piece of black jade.

Figure 5:

The six sacrificial offerings made of jade (source: Luomi art 2023).

Corresponding to the ritualistic six instruments used in ceremonies of worship, the statuses of the feudal lords in the ancient Chinese imperial court were also signified and symbolized by six types of handboards held when they attended the imperial court sessions. The handboards were adopted from two of the ceremonial instruments: the obelisk-shaped jade (yu gui) and the disc-shaped jade (yu bi) shown above in Figure 4, but of sizes varying according to the different official ranks in the hierarchical system. The four types of yu gui and two types of yu bi mark the ranks, statuses, and honor in a descending order, which is specified as follows in the Rites of Zhou. The emperor held a yu gui handboard twelve inches in length named “zhen gui” on which were carved four mountains, signifying the emperor’s supreme status, authority, and power to maintain general peace and stability across the whole territory. Each duke held a yu gui handboard nine inches in length named “huan gui,” signifying status and authority next only to the emperor. Marquises and earls held yu gui handboards seven inches in length named “xin gui” and “gong gui” respectively. However, on the handboard of a marquis was carved an individual vertical human figure symbolizing the virtue of integrity and responsibility, while on that of an earl was carved an individual forward-bending or bowing human figure symbolizing the virtue of humility and dutifulness. Finally, the handboards held by viscounts and barons were yu bi five inches in diameter named “gu bi” and “pu bi” respectively. On the former were carved a pattern of grains, symbolizing nourishment and sustenance, while on the latter were carved a pattern of reeds, symbolizing peace and prosperity. The six jade handboards as a set of markers of bureaucratic order, functionaries, and moral duties were named “liu duan” (six ends or six implements) in the Rites of Zhou.

In addition, the color of jade as an accessory worn by individuals of different social classes and statuses is also specified in a similar way to those of the six ritualistic instruments. The emperor or the king wore white jade, dukes and marquises black jade, senior courtiers dark green jade, princes colored lustrous jade, and scholars variegated jade. The imperial seal of Qin Shi Huang (259–210 BCE), the first emperor in ancient China, is made of pure white jade and is also called “the heirloom seal,” the top of which was carved with five interlocking dragons and the undersurface bearing the inscription: “Under the sovereignty of heavenly ordination, may this nation and its people bask in prosperity and longevity forever” (Figure 6).

Figure 6:

Imperial seal of the emperor Qin Shi Huang (left: five interlocking dragons; right: inscription on undersurface) (source: Guo 2025).

By combining the symbolism of jade and the dragon, the imperial seal signifies in a double sense the belief in the divine right of the king or the heavenly mandate of the hierarchy and the aspiration of peace, prosperity, and auspiciousness for the nation and her people.

Another semiotic and ritualistic function of jade is related to death rites in ancient China based on the fundamental faith that jade is the medium connecting humanity to heaven. Hence the ancient Chinese believed that in the afterlife they could reach the empyrean capital of jade under the stewardship of the omnipotent Jade Emperor and his divine followers. Therefore, jade artifacts were indispensable in ancient Chinese funerals for their power to protect the soul of the deceased for eternity. Various artifacts made of jade have been unearthed in archaeological excavations of ancient tombs (Du 1992: 342). For example, jade face plates used in the funerals of the Western Zhou dynasty (1046–771 BCE) and the jade suit in the sepulchre of the Han Dynasty (25–220), which is crafted from thousands of small jade pieces sewn together with gold or silver thread. In fact, jade was the amulet and talisman to ensure safety and well-being in both temporal life and the afterlife, and for Taoist alchemists, the oral intake of powered jade was understood as imbibing the essence and vital force of nature and heaven; thus jade was the elixir of life and longevity to them.

4 Conclusions

In I Ching, the eight trigrams, and the sixty-four hexagrams as compounded signs index and signify things, concepts, and their changes in nature and the universe. Jade as the original thing-sign and sign vehicle in the semiosis of ancient Chinese culture integrates icon, index, and symbol by synthesizing its physical, perceptual and metaphorical features and attributes, and both sign systems combined together compose the semiotic discourse in various religious and secular cultural activities of ancient China. Both semiotic means rely heavily on images,^[24] for jade, it is the iconic image, and for trigrams and hexagrams, it is the indexical image. The ancient Chinese believed that the heavenly way governs all things and the mysteries of the human psyche. The changes and interconnections of all things are represented and conveyed through the images envisaged by humans, and the trigrams in I Ching are the origin of all images with allegorical and edifying functions. For the semiosis of both jade and the trigrams, the analysis of iconicity is of crucial importance, as it reveals the experience stored and accumulated in human consciousness. The interpretation of indexicality concerns both present and absent aspects relating to perception and apperception, so fundamental semiotic activities require both the iconic relation and the indexical relation, which belong to the “firstness” stipulated in Peircean semiotic phenomenology. This cultural and epistemological background entails multiple theoretical perspectives to analyze and interpret the semiosis of jade and trigrams in ancient Chinese culture, similar to what Nöth points out with regard to semiotics, that it is a multiple semantic field concerning linguistics, logic, rhetoric, hermeneutics, aesthetics, and epistemology.

According to the assumption that jade worship is derived from the adoration of animal fat, jade can be regarded as an “ontological sign” in traditional Chinese semiosis. Meanwhile, as semiosis is the relation between the aspects manifested by the perception and co-occurring apperception of an object or a thing as sign vehicle, it can be inferred that the semiosis of jade in traditional Chinese culture on the whole involves both biogenesis and sociogenesis. The semiosis of jade starting from the senses of vision and touch is based on the subjective receptivity of impressions of jade akin to formal intuition as the rudiment of an a priori schema with the “least conceptual hue” and joined by essential intuition in the entropy of semiosis that followed. Essential intuition or ideation in the Husserlian sense functions as the method of transcendental subjective cognition on the basis of the logic of consciousness, and it emphasizes the “a priori cognition” of objects by the transcendental self.

In contrast, Peirce’s semiotic phenomenology relies on formalism and emphasizes that the form of a sign is not merely a container for content and not limited to immediate content, but has broader structural and relational properties and is able to maintain the inherently open-ended process of semiosis in the dynamic interaction of the triadic sign components: representamen, object, interpretant. Although both Husserl and Peirce endow human consciousness with sovereignty and initiative, contradictory to the idea of all things being equal in Qi wu lun, Chuang (2015a) denies the predominance of humanity over all things. Yet Peirce’s triadic semiotic mode of formalism deeply influenced biosemiotics, which focuses on the role of signs in biological systems, exploring how living organisms use signs to communicate and interact with their environment and thus giving prominence to the universal nature of semiosis and the potential of semiosis to go beyond language and culture. Chuang Tzu not only agrees with biosemioticians, but also expounds a series of means such as “坐忘,” “心斋,” and “吾丧我” to achieve the semiotic feat, and the equality, unity and harmony between human inner mind and external world. Chuang Tzu invests equal “subjectivity” to all things bordering on animatism, which attributes impersonal supernatural forces or life forces to natural objects, phenomena, and elements with a sense of wonder, awe, and veneration, and by depriving of the dominance of human consciousness as the default precondition, his mode of semiosis transcends the phenomenological mode of both Husserl and Peirce.

However, phenomenology, especially the Husserlian version, tends toward metaphysics based on Kantian a priori synthetic knowledge, shedding light on the semiosis of jade rooted in myth and primeval religion in ancient China. Yet the phenomenological analysis of its semiosis mainly focuses on how consciousness constructs meaning and overlooks how meaning is generated and interpreted, which necessarily entails the perspective of socioculture, and this indispensable perspective is provided by the theory of semiosphere from Yuri Lotman. Semiosphere, as the realm of cultural framework and memory, constructs and maintains the system and the cohesive structure of the semiosis of jade, eight trigrams, and sixty-four hexagrams in traditional Chinese culture. Lotman’s cultural semiotic thought proposes that the primary semiotic relationship is between the internal sign system and the external real world rather than between the content and expression of signs, and this allows the comprehensive interpretation of the cultural and noncultural aspects of the “human-experience-condensing” semiosis of jade in all fields such as myth, religion, politics, etc. What’s more, Lotman’s assumption that semiosis, being a state of metabolism, is dynamically open-ended corresponds to Peirce’s idea of “infinite semiosis.” For both semioticians, synchronic structurality and diachronic evolution coexist and keep the entropy of semiosis, as is shown in the history of the semiosis of jade, which expands from the initial field of myth and primeval religion to Taoist and Confucian theories of ethics, morality, and disposition. With reference to Lévy-Bruhl’s thought, in the initial semiosis of jade in the realm of myth and religion, the reason or capacity for logical thought of the Chinese people as “animal symbolicum” or “interpretant” was still under the influence of the primitive mind, and thus mystical and “pre-logical” in its nature, implementing “mystical participation” to perceive and cognize their world. Along with its semiotic evolution, after the iconic and indexical stage of jade, semiosis appears in the original written form of Chinese character in jia gu wen. The semiosis of jade enters into the nonverbal state exhibited in jade adoration among Taoists and Confucians, and this is a typical exemplar to illustrate the advancement of Peirce’s logic and rhetoric model in his semiotic theory, in which the interpretant becomes the starting point for infinite semiosis.

The semiosis of jade, involving synesthesia, imagination, myth, and religion, depends on a compounded mode in which iconicity, indexicality, and symbolicity are synthesized, and the semiosis of jade and its phylogeny was launched and rapidly developed under conditions of abundant cultural resources. The perception of an object in the mind through semiosis is not merely a process of copying it as it exists in reality, but serves as the prototype of the natural object in epistemological terms. The mind already contains this object in a kind of schematic sketch but cannot follow up the determination of the object except by the application of the functions of pure understanding to that empirical material given in perception (involving both psychology and epistemology), which generates the mechanism that determines the open-endedness of semiosis in the Peircean mode. However, despite the state of semiosis being open-ended, the specific culture of any object can be suspended or even perish, and the former is case for the Chinese culture of jade. In this respect, the semiosis of jade in traditional Chinese culture can be analyzed in terms of the phenomenon of entropy in thermodynamics. After the initial stage of the semiosis of jade, its semiotic entropy rose along its epistemological evolution, during which the meaning signified by jade proliferated and accumulated and was brought to its climax by Confucianism in the fields of politics, ethics, aesthetics, and literature. However, in a closed system, entropy no longer increases after its maximum, so the semiosis of jade gradually came to an internal state of stagnation. But in contrast to thermodynamics, which requires an input of sustaining energy to maintain this state, after the entropy of jade’s semiosis reached its maximum, it was sealed up and suspended instead of decreasing or even dying out. The entropy of the semiosis of jade was conserved because jade as a sign and thing-sign has been blended into the “gene complex” of Chinese culture, with little chance of its desemiotization taking place.