A small Chinese compass consisting of a thin disk of wood with a shallow bowl containing a short dry-pivot needle, and a line in the bowl indicating the north-south direction. Surrounding the bowl are three concentric rings, each divided into segments and marked with either symbols or Chinese characters. The first row is divided into eight segments each with one of the eight trigrams. The trigrams on this particular compass are arranged in the everted form of the Fu Hsi, which is one formulation of the eight trigrams. It has been argued that the everted form of the Fu Hsi trigram circle appeared on compasses used for Feng Shui, which would identify this compass as a geomancer's compass. The second row contains the characters for numbers in the order 4, 3, 8, [?], 6, 7, 2, 9. The signficance of this is unknown, and no other Chinese compasses in the Museum's collection have a like this. The third row 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 4 gua (trigrams). These characters are arranged in the Zheng Zhen (lit. 'correct needle') position (i.e. the north-south direction). eginning 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 Chinese characters painted on the back read, 'Xin an Xiu Yi Wang Yang Xi' and 'Jiang Da Hong'. Xin'an was the alternative name of Huizhou Prefecture in Anhui Province during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Xiu Yi means Xiu County, i.e. Xiuning County. 'Jiang Da Hong' is the name Jiang Dahong. Jiang Dahong (1616-1714) was a renowned poet active in the late Ming (1368-1644) and early Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. He was also an expert geomancer and during his career he made high-quality compasses and published several books on the subject. Many compass makers used his name as their signature, so it is unlikely that this compass was actually made by him.