EXPLORING THE CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF JADE IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE SOCIETY: A THEMATIC REVIEW

Abstract

Jade, in the context of traditional Chinese culture, assumes the role of an invaluable artifact, acting as a conduit for the preservation and documentation of China's rich historical legacy, encompassing its religious, cultural, and ideological progress.Despite the numerous publications on jade, there is a lack of thematic reviews that specifically address cultural and social characteristics. This review aims to present the findings of a thematic review on jade from the perspective of cultural symbolism, focusing on the knowledge and methodologies intrinsic to culture-based jade design. The data for this study were gathered through a thematic review of 20 publications spanning from 2013 to 2022. Additionally, the results of the ATLAS.ti 9 coding applied to the literature review reveal discernible patterns as identified by the researcher.The analysis uncovers four central themes prevalent in current research on Chinese jade, namely: 1)Chinese jade culture;2)the textual study of the cultural symbolism of jade; 3) cultural-oriented jade designdevelopment; and 4) acase study of pictorial representations of Chinese jade.The results will provide fresh perspectives on new study trends in jade cultural design principles.