Without being worked, jade cannot be shaped into a vessel;

without being educated, people cannot be shaped into virtuous citizens.

from the Trimetrical Classic, a Song dynasty (960-1279) premer on the Confucian classics

Jade cannot be carved.Because of its hardness,it can rarely be shaped by chiseling or chipping but must be worn away by abrasion with tools and hard sand pastes. This is a process that requires immense patience-even with modern machinery equipped with diamond-tipped burrs that grind out intricate designs, it remains laborious. Yet fade appeared in Chinese cultures several thousand years before metal tools existed. Neloithic jade artisans worked with bamboo, bone, and stone tools, with sand. Because the process was so labor-intensive and time-consuming, jades reflected the ability of a ruling dlite to command resources, and therefore came to symbolize power, status and prestige.