Myth-history: Yellow Emperor and Jade Worship in The Classic of Mountains and Seas

Abstract

Through a focus on the mythical narrative of Yellow Emperor’s eating the white jade cream recorded in The Classic of Mountains and Seas, this paper aims to elucidate the genetic mechanism of Chinese jade worship budded in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, unveil the underlying historical truth of the jade origination and transportation, and investigate the significance of white jade in moulding the national ideology and material production. The Classic of Mountains and Seas demonstrates a typical Chinese mythological style, marked by tension of textual mastery and semiotic indeterminacy, fictional imagination and religious conservatism, aesthetic autonomy and embedded ideology.