A Chinese compass with one row of characters. The compass consists of a bowl covered with glass containing a dry-pivot needle, which points south. The north-south direction is indicated by a piece of metal over the glass. Around the rim are 24 Chinese characters indicating the traditional azimuthal directions in 15 degree increments. These characters come from a row found on all Chinese geomantic compasses. It is believed that the Chinese mariner's compass developed out of the geomantic one. Together the characters consist of the 20 cyclical characters and four gua (trigrams). These characters are arranged in the Zheng Zhen ('correct needle') position (i.e. the north-south direction). Beginning with the character in the South position and moving clockwise the characters are: Wu, Ding, Wei, Kun, Shen, Geng, You, Xin, Xu, Qian, Hai, Ren, Zi, Gui, Chou, Gen, Yin, Jia, Mao, Yi, Chen, Xun, Si and Bing. Although the characters do refer to directions, the characters in the North, South, East and West directions are not the characters or the literal translations for these directions, but are traditional characters from the geomancer's compass. The character indicating the direction 'South' is red, while all other characters are black.

The Chinese characters insrcibed on the back of the compass are obscured by the degradation of the lacquer and are difficult to identify. The only legible character, "men", means door.