A Chinese compass consisting of a wide thin disk of lacquered wood with a small shallow bowl containing a dry-pivot needle and a line in the bowl indicating the north-south direction. Surrounding the bowl are 11 concentric rings, each divided into segments and marked with either symbols or Chinese characters. 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 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 inscription on the back reads, 'Xia Zhang Ding Nan Tang // Huang Rui Jing Zao'. 'Xia Zhang Ding Nan Tang' means, 'Dignan Hall [shop] in Xiazhang'. Xiazhang was a name for Zhangzhou, a prefecture in the Fujian Province, which was famous for geomancy and manufacturing geomantic compasses. 'Huang Rui Jing Zao' means, 'Carefully manufactured by Huang Rui Ji'. Huang Rui Ji is either the personal name of the maker or a name that has come to be used as a manufacturing name by several compass makers.