Piercings in Ancient China: Jade Jue to the Qing Court
China's piercing history runs the opposite way to most. It starts with some of the oldest ear ornaments found anywhere on earth, then turns against the practice on philosophical grounds, then comes back through people the imperial court considered outsiders.
It's also the source of a claim about the origins of ear piercing that gets repeated constantly and doesn't survive contact with the archaeology.
The Jade Jue: 8,000 Years Old
The earliest Chinese ear ornaments are jade jue (玦) — small C-shaped rings with a slit cut through one side, so the earlobe passes through the gap.
The oldest come from the Xinglongwa culture of Inner Mongolia, dating to roughly 8,000 years ago. They were made using a cord-cutting technique — abrasive worked back and forth with a string, since jade is far too hard to carve with stone tools. Similar jue show up later in the Hongshan culture.
That puts them among the earliest ear ornaments known anywhere, contemporary with or older than the Varna gold we cover in our history of body jewelry materials.
Two details make them more interesting than their age alone. Archaeological analysis suggests the wearers were ritual specialists rather than ordinary people — the ornaments concentrate in particular burials rather than being spread across a population. And the ears mattered specifically: in a worldview where communication with the unseen happened through hearing rather than sight, ornamenting the ear marked the person who listened.
Beyond jade, Neolithic ear ornaments were also made from bone, stone, agate and ivory.
Bronze Age: Gold Enters
By the Shang and Zhou dynasties (roughly 1600–256 BCE), metalwork had joined jade.
Gold wire and turquoise ear ornaments were recovered from the Tomb of Fu Hao at Anyang — one of the few Shang royal tombs found intact, and a rare case of a high-status woman's burial surviving unlooted. In 2023, a pair of Shang–Zhou gold earrings was excavated at the Jinsha site in Chengdu, adding to a picture of ear ornamentation practised across quite different regional cultures.
Classical texts reference them too. Ancient Chinese had distinct words for these ornaments — ěr (珥) for pearl or jade ear pieces, and later dāng (珰) during the Eastern Han.
At this stage the trajectory looks like every other civilization's: ornament, status, increasing sophistication of materials. Then it diverges.
The Confucian Objection
This is the part that makes Chinese piercing history distinctive, and it comes down to a single principle.
The Classic of Filial Piety holds that our bodies — down to every hair and piece of skin — are received from our parents, and that not injuring or damaging them is where filial piety begins.
Read straightforwardly, that makes piercing a problem. And it was read straightforwardly. For long stretches of Chinese history, Han women largely did not wear earrings, which is why they're so often absent from classical Chinese painting. Piercing was widely regarded as a practice of peoples outside the Han cultural sphere — a framing that says as much about how the imperial centre saw its neighbours as about the practice itself.
The objection hardened considerably under the Song. Neo-Confucian scholars condemned piercing as mutilation of the body, and Zhu Xi's Family Rites — the most influential ritual manual of its era — set out against earrings for elite women. Ming-dynasty records list earrings among the extravagances cited against a disgraced official.
So China gives us something unusual: a civilization with an extremely early piercing tradition that then developed an explicit doctrinal argument against it.
The "Control Women" Claim
Search for the origins of ear piercing and you'll find a persistent story: that it was invented to restrain women's behaviour — heavy ornaments as a reminder to move carefully and stay modest.
The claim isn't fabricated from nothing. It appears in Liuqing Rizha, a Ming-dynasty text, which records that ear piercing was originally used to discipline women's conduct.
But look at what that is. A text written in the Ming period — somewhere from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries — making a retrospective claim about the origins of a practice already six thousand years old when it was written. That's not a record of origins. It's a much later writer explaining a custom he'd inherited, in terms that fit the values of his own time.
And the archaeology contradicts it directly. The Xinglongwa jue predate the Ming by around 7,500 years, and the evidence associates them with ritual specialists rather than with the control of women.
The honest position: the Ming text tells you what some people in Ming China believed about ear piercing. It doesn't tell you why anyone in Neolithic Inner Mongolia pierced their ears. Those are different questions, and treating the second as answered by the first is how a great deal of piercing history goes wrong — as we cover in piercing superstitions and folklore.
The Practice Survived Outside the Centre
While Han elite culture turned away from piercing, it continued among other peoples within and around the Chinese world.
The Khitan and the Jurchen both maintained ear-ornament customs — and notably among men as well as women. Gold ear ornaments recovered from Jin-dynasty tombs are concentrated in noble burials, marking rank rather than gender.
The Tang dynasty saw renewed exchange along the Silk Road, and ear ornaments are one of the things that moved along it. Chinese earring history is genuinely a history of cultural exchange rather than an isolated tradition.
The clearest return came with the Qing. Manchu custom included yī ěr sān qián (一耳三钳) — "one ear, three rings" — three piercings in each ear for women, a court convention quite at odds with the Neo-Confucian position of the preceding dynasty. A practice the Song had condemned became, under a later dynasty, a marker of correct court appearance.
What China's History Actually Shows
Three things worth taking from it.
Ear ornamentation is genuinely ancient and genuinely independent. The Xinglongwa jue weren't influenced by anything from West Asia or the Mediterranean. Ear piercing arose separately in many places, which is the broader argument in our history of body piercing.
Attitudes reverse, sometimes completely. China went from ritual ear ornaments, to doctrinal opposition, to a court convention requiring three piercings per ear. Victorian Britain ran a similar arc in a much shorter time, as we cover in Victorian era piercings.
Late explanations aren't origins. The Ming account of why ear piercing began is evidence about the Ming, not about the Neolithic.
Comparable stories for other ancient civilizations are in our guides to ancient Egypt, ancient Rome and ancient Greece, and the broader meanings ear piercing carries across cultures are in what ear piercings mean around the world.
Materials, Then and Now
The Neolithic choice of jade wasn't only aesthetic. Jade is hard, takes a high polish, doesn't corrode, and doesn't react with skin — the same properties that made gold the durable choice elsewhere, arrived at from a completely different material.
Modern standards ask a different question: not what lasts, but what tissue tolerates. For a healing piercing that means implant-grade titanium, solid 14K or 18K gold, or niobium. Browse our implant-grade titanium and 14K gold ranges.
Frequently Asked Questions
How old is ear piercing in China?
Around 8,000 years. Jade jue — C-shaped slit rings worn through the earlobe — come from the Xinglongwa culture of Inner Mongolia and are among the earliest ear ornaments found anywhere in the world.
What is a jade jue?
A small ring of jade with a slit cut through one side, so the earlobe passes through the gap. Made using a cord-cutting technique, since jade is too hard for stone tools to carve. They appear in Neolithic Chinese cultures including Xinglongwa and Hongshan.
Did ancient Chinese women wear earrings?
Less than you'd expect. Ear ornaments appear in Neolithic and Bronze Age contexts, but for long stretches of later history Han women largely didn't wear them, because Confucian teaching held that damaging the body conflicted with filial piety. This is why earrings are often absent from classical Chinese painting.
Was ear piercing really invented to control women?
No, on the evidence. The claim comes from a Ming-dynasty text asserting that piercing was originally used to discipline women's behaviour — but that was written thousands of years after the practice began, and the archaeology associates the earliest Chinese ear ornaments with ritual specialists. The Ming text records a later belief, not an origin.
What does Confucianism say about piercing?
The Classic of Filial Piety holds that the body is received from one's parents and shouldn't be injured, and that this is where filial piety begins. Song-dynasty Neo-Confucians applied that directly against piercing; Zhu Xi's Family Rites set out against earrings for elite women.
What is "one ear, three rings"?
Yī ěr sān qián (一耳三钳), a Manchu custom in which women wore three ear ornaments in each ear. It became a convention of Qing court appearance — a striking reversal of the Song-dynasty position.
Did Chinese men wear earrings?
Among some peoples, yes. The Khitan and Jurchen maintained ear-ornament customs for men as well as women, and gold ear ornaments from Jin-dynasty tombs are concentrated in noble burials, suggesting they marked rank.
This article describes historical practices and the sources that record them; where those sources are late, contested or reflect the values of their own period, we have said so. It is for general information only and is not medical advice.