A Chinese compass consisting of a wide thin disk of lacquered wood, with a dry-needle compass in a small shallow bowl, which has a line indicating the north-south direction. Surrounding the bowl are 19 concentric rings, each divided into segments and marked with either symbols or Chinese characters.

The fourth ring is divided into 24 parts indicating the traditional azimuthal directions. Each segment contains one Chinese character, which together consist of the 20 cyclical characters and four gua (trigrams). These characters are arranged in the Zheng Zhen (lit. '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 the traditional characters from the geomancer's compass. Wu, Kun, Shen, Xu, Qian, Ren, Zi, Gui, Yin, Jia, Yi, and Chen are red and all other characters are painted black. The red and black characters in this row represent the pure ying and pure yang. This row is found on all Chinese geomantic compasses.

The 20 lines of writing on the back of the compass explain the function played of each 'ceng' (layer) of the compass. The other inscription reads, 'Xia Zhang Ding Nan Tang // Huang Rui Jing Zao'. 'Xia Zhang Ding Nan Tang' translates as, 'Dignan Hall [shop] in Xiazhang'. Xiazhang is an alternative name for Zhangzhou a prefecture in the Fujian Province, which was famous for geomancy and manufacturing geomantic compasses. 'Huang Rui Jing Zao' means, 'Carefully manufacturered by Huang Rui Ji'. Huang Rui Ji is either the personal name of the maker or a manufacturing name used by several compass makers.