The Jade Emperor, Ruler of the Chinese Heaven

Who is the Jade Emperor?

The Jade Emperor is the ruler of heaven in Chinese popular religion, the god most people in China would name if asked who is in charge of the sky. He is usually called Yudi, the Jade Emperor, or Yuhuang Dadi, the Great Jade Emperor. He sits on a throne in the Hall of Divine Mists and governs the gods the way an emperor governed China: through ministries, officials, reports and appointments.

Unlike many older gods, the Jade Emperor has no ancient myth of his own. He does not create the world, fight monsters or found a dynasty. He became the head of the heavenly government over centuries, as Daoism organized its gods into a court and as the Song dynasty emperors gave him official honors. Today he is worshipped in Daoist and folk temples across the Chinese-speaking world, and his birthday is one of the big festivals of the New Year season.

Most readers outside China meet him in Journey to the West, where he is the monarch whom Sun Wukong tries to throw out of heaven. For the wider family of gods around him, see our guide to the Chinese gods.

The Jade Emperor's names and titles

The Jade Emperor has a stack of titles, and Journey to the West gives one of the longest in its very first chapter. When a newborn stone monkey shoots golden light from his eyes up to the stars, the novel says the light disturbed the god of heaven, and it names him in full.

He sends two officers called Thousand-Mile Eye and Wind-Following Ear to look through the Southern Gate of Heaven. They report that it is only a monkey born from a stone. The Jade Emperor answers that things in the lower world are produced from the essence of heaven and earth, and are nothing to be surprised at. It is the first of many times he will underestimate the monkey.

Other common names are worth knowing:

• Yudi: the Jade Emperor, the short everyday name.
• Yuhuang Dadi: the Great Jade Emperor, the fuller popular title.
• Yuhuang Ye: Lord Jade Emperor, an affectionate name used by ordinary worshippers.
• Lord of Heaven (Tiangong): the usual name among Hokkien speakers in Taiwan, Fujian and Southeast Asia.
• Haotian Shangdi: Sovereign of the Vast Heaven, an ancient title for the high god of the sky that the Song court joined to his name.

The word jade in his name is a mark of purity and value. Jade was the most precious stone in China, and in Daoist writing jade is the material of heaven: the capital of the gods is called the Jade Capital and its palaces have jade halls.

The prince who gave away his kingdom

The Jade Emperor's life story comes from a Daoist scripture, the Scripture of the Deeds of the Most High Jade Emperor. Its date is uncertain, and it survives in the Ming dynasty Daoist Canon completed in 1445. In it the Celestial Worthy of the Primordial Beginning, the highest Daoist god, tells an assembly of immortals where the Jade Emperor came from.

The royal couple have no son. The king orders Daoist priests to hold rites and pray for an heir, and after half a year the queen dreams that the Supreme Lord of the Dao, one of the highest Daoist gods, arrives in a dragon carriage holding a baby whose every pore gives off light. She kneels and asks for the child to be the heir of the kingdom, and the god gives him to her. She wakes up pregnant.

The prince grows up clever and kind and gives away everything in the royal treasury to the poor, the widowed, the orphaned and the sick. When his father dies he takes the throne only briefly, then hands the kingdom to a worthy minister and goes into the mountains to practice the Dao. The scripture then counts his lives in kalpas, the vast ages of Buddhist and Daoist time: eight hundred kalpas of giving up his kingdom for others, eight hundred of healing the sick, eight hundred of teaching scripture, and eight hundred of giving up his own flesh and blood. After 3,200 kalpas he becomes a golden immortal, and only after countless more kalpas, literally a hundred million, does he become the Jade Emperor.

The story echoes the life of the Buddha, another prince who left his palace. This is typical of how Chinese religion grew: the idea of a saint who earns his place over endless lives was given to the Daoist ruler of heaven.

How the Jade Emperor became ruler of heaven

The Jade Emperor's rise is partly a matter of real history. The Chinese had worshipped a high god of the sky, Shangdi or Heaven, since the Shang and Zhou dynasties, more than three thousand years ago. The name Jade Emperor came much later, and he became the official head of heaven under the Song dynasty.

The key figure is Emperor Zhenzong of Song, who reigned from 997 to 1022 and promoted Daoist worship at court. A Ming dynasty collection of god biographies, the Complete Collection of the Gods of the Three Teachings, quotes the Song court records: in 1014 Zhenzong told his ministers that he wished to join all his subjects in offering the Jade Emperor a sacred title, and at the start of 1017 he went to a Daoist hall and presented him with a long title that joined the old name of the high god, Haotian, to the name Jade Emperor. From then on the Jade Emperor and the ancient god of the sky were increasingly treated as one ruler.

In formal Daoist teaching he still ranks below the Three Pure Ones, the three highest gods of Daoism, and he is counted among the Four Sovereigns who govern the universe under them. In popular religion that subtlety mostly disappears. To ordinary worshippers, the Jade Emperor is simply the emperor of heaven, and the other gods are his ministers.

The court of heaven

The Jade Emperor's heaven is a mirror of the Chinese imperial state. His palace is the Hall of Divine Mists, reached through the Southern Gate of Heaven, which is guarded by heavenly kings and soldiers. Gods hold offices and ranks, petitions arrive as written memorials, and lesser gods report on the human world.

• Ministers and messengers: the planet Venus, called the Great White Star, often carries his decrees; in Journey to the West it is this old official who proposes making Sun Wukong a heavenly official instead of fighting him.
• Generals: the Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King Li Jing and his son Nezha lead heaven's armies.
• Departments: there are ministries of thunder, plague, fire and wealth, each with its own staff of gods.
• Household and local gods: the Kitchen God, city gods and earth gods report to heaven on what people do. In folk custom the Kitchen God goes up to report at the end of each year.
• Rain and water: the Dragon Kings of the four seas bring rain on the Jade Emperor's orders and answer to him for their conduct.

The dragons' duty to the throne drives the plot of Nezha's story in Investiture of the Gods. After the boy kills his son, the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea storms out of Li Jing's house with a threat.

Popular belief often treats the Queen Mother of the West, who holds the banquet of the peaches of immortality, as the Jade Emperor's consort, though the two come from different traditions and the older texts do not marry them. Some versions of the folk tale of the Weaver Girl and the Cowherd make her the Jade Emperor's daughter or granddaughter; others make her the daughter of the Queen Mother alone.

The Jade Emperor in Journey to the West

In Journey to the West the Jade Emperor is a polite, cautious ruler who keeps being outplayed. When Sun Wukong first comes to heaven and fails to bow, the ministers are horrified, but the Jade Emperor forgives him as a newcomer and gives him a job. The job is Keeper of the Heavenly Horses, which turns out to have no rank at all. The monkey storms home and calls himself Great Sage Equal to Heaven, and after a failed attack the court gives him that title too, as an office with no salary.

When Sun Wukong eats the peaches of immortality, ruins the Queen Mother's banquet and steals Laozi's elixir, an army of a hundred thousand heavenly soldiers cannot beat him. Execution fails, and the monkey fights his way to the doors of the Hall of Divine Mists. The Jade Emperor sends to the West for the Buddha. The monkey tells the Buddha that emperors take turns and that next year the throne should be his. The Buddha laughs at him and explains why the Jade Emperor deserves it.

The Buddha then traps the monkey under a mountain, and the Jade Emperor holds a feast in his honor, which the Buddha names the Great Feast for Peace in Heaven. The number in his speech is not the same as the 3,200 kalpas of the Daoist scripture, a sign that the novel was working from popular ideas, not from one fixed text.

Two of the pilgrims also owe their exile to the Jade Emperor. Sha Wujing was a general who broke a crystal cup at the peach banquet and was beaten and sent down to earth. Zhu Bajie, the pig, was once a marshal of the heavenly river.

Chang'e is the goddess of the moon, and you can read her story in our entry on Chang'e. The point here is that the Jade Emperor's justice is harsh, quick and very bureaucratic: punish first, and let the bodhisattvas sort out redemption later.

The Jade Emperor's birthday and worship

The Jade Emperor's birthday falls on the ninth day of the first lunar month, a little over a week after Chinese New Year. The date matches the one in the Daoist scripture. Temples hold large ceremonies, and in Taiwan, Fujian and Hokkien-speaking communities of Southeast Asia, families set up tables of offerings outdoors on the night before, facing the open sky, and pray to the Lord of Heaven around midnight. Whole stalks of sugarcane are a common offering in these communities.

Because he is so high, the Jade Emperor is often worshipped without a statue. Many temples honor him with an incense burner in the open courtyard, a spirit tablet or an altar facing heaven, and in homes some families keep a small burner by the door for the Lord of Heaven. Other gods, such as Guanyin, Mazu or Guan Yu, may receive more daily prayers, but the Jade Emperor stands at the top of the order.

The Jade Emperor also appears in many folk tales that have no single written source. The best known is the story of the race that decided the order of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac, in which the Jade Emperor calls the animals together. Versions differ from place to place, and none can be traced to a classical text.

The Jade Emperor today

The Jade Emperor is still a living god. His temples range from small village shrines to large complexes, and his birthday is a public festival for millions of people. In fiction he is a fixed figure of the background: the emperor in the clouds whom heroes appeal to, rebel against or mock.

On screen he appears in nearly every adaptation of the Monkey King story, from the animated film Havoc in Heaven of the 1960s to the 1986 television series Journey to the West.

To meet the people of his court, start with the general who fought for him, Nezha, and the monkey who fought against him, Sun Wukong. For the full novel in outline, see our guide to Journey to the West.