According to the 1957 survey by Chêng Tê-k'un (鄭徳坤), the earliest extant tortoise-borne stele is thought to be the one at the tomb of Fan Min (樊敏), in Lushan County, Ya'an, Sichuan.

[4][8] In the collection of the Nanjing Museum there is a hunping funerary jar, dating to 272 AD, with a miniature architectural composition on top, depicting, among other objects, a tortoise carrying a stele erected by the Jin dynasty governor of Changsha in honor of a local dignitary.

The Ming founder, the Hongwu Emperor, in the first year after the dynasty had been proclaimed (1368), adopted regulations, allowing tortoise-based funerary tablets to the higher ranks of the nobility and the mandarinate.

Occasionally, a foreign head of state was honored with a bixi as well, as it happened to the sultan of Brunei Abdul Majid Hassan, who died during his visit to China in 1408.

The earliest extant monument of the Turkic Kaganate - the so-called "Bugut Stele" of the late 6th century from Arkhangai Province in western Mongolia with a Sogdian and (most likely) Brahmi Mongolic inscription was installed on a stone tortoise.

[22][23] According to the Turkish researcher Cengiz Alyilmaz, it was the design of this stele that influenced the builders of the important 8th-century stelae with Old Turkic inscriptions, many of which also stood on tortoises.

[23][24] Among them, the most accessible one is probably Bayanchur Khan's (Eletmish Bilge Kağan)'s Terhin-Gol stele (753 AD), now in the Mongolian Academy of Sciences in Ulan Bator.

[27] Vietnam also has a long tradition of tortoise-born stelae, where they commemorate Emperor Lê Thái Tổ as well as the graduates of the Confucian academy at Hanoi's Temple of Literature.

While there is no indigenous tradition of erecting stelae on tortoise-shaped pedestals in the United States, a Qing period bixi can be seen on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[5] The creatures looked quite realistic through the Song dynasty, when huge tortoise pedestals, such as the ones in Shou Qiu near Qufu, or the one in Dai Miao at Mount Tai, were erected.

According to some 19th-century western authors, the Chinese tradition of using a tortoise as a pedestal may have a common source with the Indian legend of the world being held up by a giant turtle.

[29] The word bi 贔 or bixi 贔屭 (also written with a variant character, 贔屓) is translated by Chinese dictionaries as "strong", "capable to support great weight".

The earliest known Ming-era list of fantastic creatures appearing in architecture and applied art is given by Lu Rong (1436–1494) in his Miscellaneous records from the bean garden (菽園雜記, Shuyuan zaji).

[32] Lu Rong claims that his list (including the total of 14 creatures) is based on the ancient books of beasts and supernatural creatures, the Shan Hai Jing and the Bo Wu Zhi (博物志); however, as the modern researchers Yang Jingrong and Liu Zhixiong note, that is not the case, and the names, much more likely, were taken by Lu Rong from the folklore of his time.

However, both Li Dongyang (1441–1516), in his Huai Lu Tang Ji, and Xie Zhaozhe (謝肇淛, 1567–1624), in his Wu Za Zu (五雜俎, Five Assorted Offerings, ca.