Jadeology 21. The Memory Chip of Jade

The mission of Jadeology is to use the "memory chip" of jade to reboot the celestial path that was severed long ago.

I. Vindicating Liangzhu: Faith is Not Waste

The Liangzhu civilization was undoubtedly the most significant archaeological discovery of the 20th century, earning worldwide recognition as a cornerstone of human heritage. In 2019, the ruins of Liangzhu City were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. For forty years, scholars have studied this culture—specifically its jade—as these artifacts are the most reliable windows into the true soul of Liangzhu.

If the Hongshan culture of the Northeast represents the "father figure" and the nomadic, horse-riding roots of the nation, then Liangzhu represents the "mother culture" of the Southeast. Along the lower Yangtze River, we find the origins of rice agriculture: vast fields, storage facilities, and the world’s oldest dams—some of which remain functional today. Yet, the most profound evidence of the Liangzhu mind is found in their jade.

Early scholars acknowledged that jade served a religious function. However, the mainstream consensus often took a cynical turn. Because the Cong (the iconic jade tube) held nothing and served no "practical" secular purpose, many argued that the civilization collapsed because they "wasted" too much labor on non-functional objects. They suggest that faith led to their extinction.

While Liangzhu vanished suddenly—perhaps due to climate change—to dismiss their faith as "waste" reveals a modern shortcoming: a lack of spiritual belief. We still eat the same rice they grew, yet we fail to recognize the value of the spirit that drove them.

II. The Great Severance

This spiritual void is often attributed to modern materialism, but the roots go deeper. The dismissal of the divine was cemented three thousand years ago during the Western Zhou Dynasty. For three millennia, Chinese culture has built a society based almost exclusively on the secular world, dismissing the divine. This is the most distinguished, yet overlooked, difference between the East and the West.

The soul of the Chinese people has wandered for three millennia in a desert of instrumental rationality and power. We have lost the ability to converse directly with the universe; we have reduced faith to a transaction and mistaken sacred jade for mere stone.

Jadeology is an exploration of the Neolithic era—tracing the path from Hongshan and Liangzhu through the Shang, Zhou, Qin, and Han. It asks: Why did we become a nation without a religion? At what point did we take a different road? To understand the jade is to understand who we were, and who we are today.

III. The Core Assertion: Jade as Supreme Exercise

Mainstream historiography dismisses Liangzhu jade as a "useless waste of resources." This is the peak of modern materialistic arrogance.

The Truth: Jade was never a burden on productivity; it was the Supreme Mental Exercise of a civilization. Without the social cohesion generated by this spiritual pursuit, the monumental hydraulic engineering projects of that era—the dams and the cities—would never have existed.

This so-called "waste" was a spiritual investment made by humanity to avoid descending into mere animality. The disappearance of Liangzhu was not a failure of intellect, but a refusal to degrade divinity into secular power. It is time the world hears the true story of the memory held within the jade.