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Japanese Order of the Rising Sun and the Order of the Sacred Treasure. The new republic continued to borrow heavily from Japan in designing its honors. Breast badges featured the Japanese style hook-and-eye suspension device. Awards were accompanied with lapel rosettes and presented in Japanese-style black-lacquer cases with the name and class of the award inscribed. Even the bestowal documents closely copied Japanese award

certificates. The insignia features a center medallion with five-upright wheat stalks in cloisonné enamel set against a white enamel background. The stalks are tied together at the base by a ribbon in the colors of the national flag – red, yellow, blue, white and black. The medallion is bordered by a green or turquoise band edged in gilt. This contains a number of dots edged in silver in the colors of the national flag.

The badge is the medallion mounted on a star comprising eight groups of ascending flat rays enameled in white and edged in silver, separated by seven fluted rays. The flat and fluted rays are gilded for the First (Figures 3 and 4) and Second Class (Figures 5 and 6). The Third through Seventh Classes of the order are illustrated in Figure 7

through 10). For the Eighth (Figure 11) and Ninth Classes the rays are silver not white enameled. For all classes, the reverse of the badge has a red-enamel medallion inscribed with the name of the order in Chinese seal script characters.

Badges incorporate a suspension device in the shape of the traditional yun tou or cloud-head and, for the First and Second Class sash badges, an eight-pointed star. Clouds (yun) are amongst the oldest decorative motifs in Chinese art and date back to the Han Dynasty. Clouds symbolize the heavens and good fortune and the cloud suspension device also featured in Order of the Double Dragon founded in 1882 as China’s first Western-style order.

The First Class breast star is the badge mounted on a

Figure 2: Order of the Blue Dragon breast star. In 1911, the final year of the Qing Dynasty, the Imperial Court instituted new decorations to replace the Order of the Double Dragon. The insignia was strongly influenced by Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun and Order of the Sacred Treasure. While the late Qing awards were never fully implemented, the republic resurrected the Grand Order as its highest decoration in 1912 and drew heavily on the Colored Dragons in designing the Golden Grain. Note the similarity between the Blue Dragon and the First Class Golden Grain breast star in Figures 3 and 5 (UBS

Switzerland).

Figure 3: First Class, breast star, diameter 9 mm, and badge diameter 71mm. Note the inner rays of the breast star are white enamel

(Spink).

Vol. 66, No. 2 (March-April 2015) 15

Figure 4: First Class, breast star; note the white-enameled star rays of the center

medallion (Morton & Eden).

Figure 5: Second Class, breast star, diameter 88mm, and badge, diameter 64mm, awarded to A.H. Hyland,

Commissioner of Chinese Postal Services. Note the inner rays of the breast star are gilded and fluted (Spink).

Figure 6: Special Second Class, breast star, diameter 88mm, awarded to Ardon Henry Hyland, Commissioner of Chinese Postal Services. Hyland also received the Second Class Grand Cordon. Note the fluted, gilt, star

rays of the center medallion (Spink).

Figure 7: Third Class, neck badge, diameter 65mm, awarded to Ardon Henry Hyland, Commissioner of

Chinese Postal Services (Spink).

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Figure 8: Fourth Class, breast badge, diameter 49mm (Morton & Eden).

Figure 9: Fifth Class, breast badge, 45mm (Morton & Eden).

Figure 10: Sixth Class, breast badge, 45mm, in original-black lacquer case.

(Morton & Eden).

Figure 11: Eighth Class, breast badge, diameter 41.5mm. (Morton and Eden).