Cicadas pop up in Chinese folktales, too, like
this animated one on YouTube about a friendship between a cicada and a bird. And they’re in classical poetry, like the great Tang Dynasty poem “Ode to the Cicada,” written from the point of view of a political prisoner.
The insects’ appearances stretch back 4,000 years, to a time when ancient settlers carved cicadas from jade and placed them on the tongues of the dead before burial, evoking transcendence and eternal life.
“The earliest examples we have date to the Neolithic period,” says Sarah Laursen, a curator of Chinese art at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Mass. “There’s one Han Dynasty cicada in our collection that’s my favorite. This jade cicada is smooth and flat and fits in the palm of your hand. The carving’s very simple, just a few lines. The wings are tucked in close to the body. Now, real cicadas have clear wings covered with delicate veins — but most jade cicadas are just plain. This one is special. It has tiny triangles of gold foils showing just how precious it was.”
Cicadas were associated with nobility, adds Smithsonian curator Jan Stuart, who wrote about cicadas in Chinese art in an essay for the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C. “They have huge eyes,” she says, evoking visionary leadership. “And they eat only they purest of pure things, tree sap.”
The Met
Ornamental Plaque, Eastern Jin dynasty (317–420), 4th–5th century, China, Gilt bronze, gold, lapis lazuli, turquoise, and white coral.
That suggests cicadas have a sort of incorruptible nature. “But they’re in this sort of muddied earth,” Stuart continues. “And then they emerge but they emerge unsullied, and they fly to the highest branches of a tree.” Lofty and transformative, cicadas could be easily read, she suggests, as intermediaries between earth and heaven.
Some people find cicadas scary-looking, with their red, bulging eyes, veiny wings and creepy, fragile shells they leave behind. “My advice is just look at them in Chinese art,” Stuart laughs. “They’re beautiful.”
And especially today, she adds, a potent and enduring symbol of transformation and regeneration.