Mandarin square

A 15th-century portrait of the Ming minister Liu Daxia. His mandarin square indicates that he was a civil official of the first rank.

Mandarin squares were first authorized for the wear of officials in the sumptuary laws of 1391 of the Ming dynasty.[4]^: 235 The use of squares depicting birds for civil officials and animals for military officials was an outgrowth of the use of similar squares, apparently for decorative use, in the Yuan dynasty.[5] The original court dress regulations of the Ming dynasty were published in 1368, but did not refer to badges as rank insignia.[6] These badges continued to be used through the remainder of the Ming and the subsequent Qing dynasty until the imperial system fell in 1912.

Ming nobles and officials wore their rank badges on full-cut red robes with the design stretching from side to side, completely covering the chest and back. This caused the badges to be slightly trapezoidal with the tops narrower than the bottom.[7] The Ming statutes never refer to the number of birds or animals that should appear on the badges. In the beginning, two or three were used. In a typical example of paired birds, they were shown in flight on a background of bright cloud streamers on a gold background. Others showed one bird on the ground with the second in flight. The addition of flowers produced an idealized naturalism.[8][9]

A Qing dynasty photograph of a government official with mandarin square on the chest.

There was a sharp difference between the Ming and Qing styles of badges: the Qing badges were smaller with a decorative border.[10] And, while the specific birds and animals did not change much throughout their use, the design of the squares underwent an almost continual evolution.[11] According to rank, Qing-dynasty nobles had their respective official clothes. Princes, including Qin Wang and Jun Wang, usually wore black robes as opposed to the blue robes in court, and had four circular designs, one on each shoulder, front, and back, as opposed to the usual front-and-back design. Specifically, princes of the blood used four front-facing dragons, Qin Wang had two front-facing and two side-facing dragons, and Jun Wang had four side-facing ones; all had five claws on each foot. Beile and Beizi had a circular design on their official clothing, the former having two front-facing dragons, the latter two side-facing ones; these dragons had only four claws on each foot, and are referred to as "drakes" or "great serpents" (巨蟒 jù-mǎng). National duke, general, efu, "commoner" duke, marquis and count had two front-facing, four-clawed dragons on square designs, whereas viscount and baron had cranes and golden pheasants, as for mandarins of the first and second class.

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  3rd civil rank (peacock). Mid 19th century. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
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  2nd military rank (lion). Late 18th cent. Art Gallery of New South Wales
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  3rd military rank (leopard). 19th or early 20th century. Chester Beatty Library
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  Members of three generations of a lineage are shown in Qing mandarin attire, complete with mandarin squares

Jesuit missionary Adam Schall wearing a robe with civilian mandarin badge of the first rank

The specific birds and animals used to represent rank varied only slightly from the inception of mandarin squares until the end of the Qing dynasty. Officials who held a lower position or did odd jobs used the magpie during the Ming dynasty. Supervising officials used xiezhi. Musicians used the oriole. The following tables[12] show this evolution:

The use of the round-shaped and square-shaped buzi has been revived in China following the Hanfu movement.