Chinese knot
A decorative knot tied from a single cord, usually red, in a symmetrical pattern often shaped like a diamond, hung at the Spring Festival and given at weddings for luck. Named knots carry their own wishes: the panchang knot for long life, the tongxin knot for love.
Meaning
The Chinese knot (中國結, zhōngguó jié) is tied or woven from a single length of cord, Xinhua reports, and is a common decoration for the Spring Festival. Most are symmetrical, often in a rhombus, and knotters usually choose deep red because the colour stands for good fortune. Particular knots carry particular meanings: the panchang knot implies longevity, the petal-shaped tuanjin knot reunion and a good future, and the tongxin, or “true love”, knot is given or used at weddings to express love and fidelity. EBSCO’s reference entry adds that in China the knot generally symbolises union and togetherness, that some decorators use knots in feng shui, and that Chinese knots are now a common ornament hung from a car’s rear-view mirror. During the Beijing Olympics of 2008 Chinese knot images gained international attention.
Origin and history
Knots are old in China; the name is new. EBSCO notes evidence of knot-tying from the Warring States period (481–221 BC) and its main development under the Tang (618–907), and says that under the Song (960–1279) particular knots came to carry particular messages and were given as gifts. Xinhua cites the knotter Chen Hsia-sheng (Lydia Chen) for a tongxin knot on bronze of the late Warring States, and records the belief that knots were the predecessors of writing, tied to keep records before characters were invented. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, EBSCO writes, the craft had become extremely rare in China. Its revival is credited to Chen, whose work at the Palace Museum in Taipei began with two knots taught her by a veteran craftsman there.
Who named the Chinese knot?
The sources agree on Lydia Chen and disagree on dates. Xinhua says that her father-in-law, then vice dean of the Taipei Palace Museum, encouraged her to learn in 1971, when she was 32, and that her book of 1981 gave the craft the name “Chinese knot”. EBSCO says she began researching knotting in the 1960s and dates her book Chinese Knotting to 1971. Xinhua credits her with studying and naming knots such as the panchang and the tuanjin. In 2023 she gave one of her knots to the Palace Museum in Beijing.
The knot of long life
Xinhua gives the panchang knot the meaning of long life. W. Perceval Yetts, in 1912, recorded the same meaning for the endless knot among the Buddhist emblems (endless knot), and suggested that it came from a mystic sign of Vishnu, a derivation that is his own.
Read next
- Next in Chinese mythology and symbolsQilinA gentle horned beast of Chinese legend, with the body of a deer, the tail of an ox and scales like a fish, whose appearance was said to announce a wise ruler or the birth of a sage. In English it is often called the Chinese unicorn.
- The same shape in Greek gods and their symbolsZeusZeus’s symbol is the thunderbolt, the weapon Hesiod says the Cyclopes gave him. In Greek art he also holds a sceptre, often with an eagle, his bird, perched on it; the oak was his tree.
See also
Endless knot, Chinese dragon (long), Flaming pearl, Fenghuang (Chinese phoenix), Guardian lions (foo dogs), Pixiu (bixie).
Sources
- Chinese knot ties Taiwan artist to traditional culture (Xinhua), Xinhua, “Chinese knot ties Taiwan artist to traditional culture”, February 2025, republished by the Gansu provincial Belt and Road portal, Xinhua News Agency, article text
- Chinese knotting (EBSCO Research Starters), EBSCO Research Starters, “Chinese knotting”, EBSCO, article text
- Symbolism in Chinese Art (W. Perceval Yetts, 1912), W. Perceval Yetts, “Symbolism in Chinese Art”, read before the China Society, 18 January 1912 (Leyden: E. J. Brill, 1912), The China Society, p. 18
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from diamonds or lines.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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