Ju-I

The familiar S-shaped ju-i good-luck symbol ("ju-i" means "as you wish") can be traced back a long way in Chinese cultural history. Appearing in many guises, the ju-i is one of China's most characteristic signs and symbols.

At the same time, the ju-i's development over the ages illustrates the transformation of the practical into the artistic.

Look, for example, at the S-shaped back scratcher used by a monk in the painting Eighteen Lohans. Who would associate it with the incomparably lovely golden and bejeweled ju-i's seen in the National Palace Museum? Whether in form, function, or quality of material, they differ as much as night and day.

Yet the ju-i's primitive origins do, in fact, lie in the back scratcher. Ancient records tell us how the minister Lo Kung-yuan once broke off a branch of bamboo and made it into a back scratcher for the T'ang emperor Ming Huang (r. 712-755) when the emperor had an itch. This kind of back scratcher, still popular today, was called a ju-i, since it enables the user to scratch "as he wishes." Yu Shih-nan, also of the T'ang dynasty, once felt so contented scratching with a ju-i made of rhinoceros horn that he forgot what he had just been working on. "This is interfering with my prosody!" he finally exclaimed.

Besides scratching backs, the ju-i could also be used as a kind of "cheat sheet"-- Buddhist priests would write the words of prayers on the back so they could refresh their memories at a glance "as they wished." The function was thus similar to that of the court official's hu, or memorial tablet.

As time went by, nobles, gentry, and scholars began to beautify and refine the ju-i. During the aesthetically inclined Six Dynasties period (222-589), ju-i's were elaborately carved and engraved from gold, jade, bone, rhinoceros horn, and red sandalwood. They gradually developed into purely nominal good-luck pieces, to be given as gifts or simply admired as objects d'art.

Early ju-i's still retained something of their back-scratcher shape. This can be seen from the nine precious ju-i's from the mid-8th century kept at the Todaiji Temple in Nara, Japan.

But once ju-i's were no longer made for scratching, their form underwent various changes. The "Bronze T'ang Patterned Ju-I" (made before 792 A.D.) and the "Five Lions Ju-I" (later 9th century), also at Todaiji, have heads shaped like hearts, leaves, or clouds, depending on how one looks at it.

Over the years, the ju-i lost nearly all traces of its original form. Some ju-i's were mistakenly patterned after the ling-chih magic fungus, such as those from the Ching dynasty (1644-1911) kept in the National Palace Museum. The tendency towards ever more abstraction and symbolization occurred on the folk level as well. In Peking, for example, a jade ju-i is customarily prepared for weddings, so that the marriage may go "just as the couple wishes."

And, to "open their brushes for spring," literary men often write the two characters "ju-i" in an elongated shape like that of the object itself. As to the form's appearance as a pattern on good-luck pieces and designs, the ubiquity of its presence is scarcely surprising.