Long before 王 (king) looked the way it does now, an even older pictograph showed pieces of jade strung on a cord: the short strokes are the jade discs, the line through them is the string. Jade was treasured so highly in ancient China that once 王 came to look almost identical, scribes added a small dot to 玉 to tell the two apart — the king's axe and the jade string, just one stroke apart ever since.
A piece of culture
The seal that made an emperor The most famous jade in Chinese history is the Heshibi (和氏璧), a flawless disc discovered centuries earlier, during the Spring and Autumn period. In the 3rd century BCE the First Emperor had it carved into the Heirloom Seal of the Realm (传国玉玺), stamped with the words "having received the Mandate of Heaven" — and for over a thousand years, whoever held that jade seal could claim to be China's rightful emperor. The seal disappeared sometime after the 10th century, but the idea behind it never did: in China, true authority was carved in jade, not gold.
Use it in a real word
玉米
yùmǐ · juk6 mai5
corn; maize — literally "jade rice", from its shiny golden kernels; you already know 米