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 1960's ~ 1980's
During the Japanese colonial period, there was a Japanese mine here and they actually uncovered the jade, but didn't realize it. They were mining asbestos. They separated the jade (the "bad rock") from the asbestos, and piece by piece threw it into the valley below, as if it was trash stone. Only in the 1960's did anyone discover this trash was really jade. The Cheng Gong University student, Mr. Liao Xue-Cheng, noticed a blue rock and verified that it was nephrite. After this the Central Daily News newspaper reported the find. In their September 24, 1965 paper they reported that jadeite was found in Hua Lian. Then a professor of geology from the premier university" National Taiwan University" also went to the mining area evaluate the report and do research. This review and confirmation stimulated a boom in the mining industry, this time centered around jade. This was the Fong Tian jade heyday. Fong Tian's mining mountain shifted its focus to soft jade and began marketing it globally.
At that time, the village of Fong Shan had jade. Almost no house was outside the jade business. Fong Tian was called Hua Lian's richest area. Just in the Fong Tian area there were almost 40 taxis at that time. That's a huge number. These were just to carry all the people around who were in the jade trade. This community created the sparkling pages of history about Fong Tian jade.
In the 1960's the Fong Tian nephrite processing industry just shot up everywhere, like sprouts appearing after a warm springtime rain! According to the statistics from that time, there were over 2,000 processing plants. And around 200,000 people were directly or indirectly involved in jade production and sales. The market retail price was close to 20 billion NT. Between 1966 and 1971, the Taiwan nephrite was mined in massive quantities.
It was only after 1976 that the jade mining industry reached its pinnacle. Whether production or processing, everyone it was involved. In this period, Fong Tian jade mining communities were intense. There were 2 sayings you always heard" "every household does jade" and "the richest area in Hua Lian." Just in nephrite production, Taiwan accounted for 60% of the global production. Government publications say that the total production of Fong Tian jade was over 10,000 tons. This made it the world's top producer. Fong Tian jade, because of this, was called the gemstone of Taiwan and it became one of the best representatives of a "Taiwan special product."
The Fong Tian jade called "da xiang green nephrite" developed a strong reputation throughout the global jewelry industry. At one time it really was top quantity in the world. But, you know, too many people used dynamite to mine, like crazy, and there was a huge waste. It damaged more than half of the stone. Then add to that the oil crisis of the 1970's that sent the global economy into a downward spiral. The surface jade mines were quickly used up. The quantity there really wasn't so much. The distribution was irregular, and then the cost of mining went up when salaries went up. That's why the deeper mining had to go to deeper areas, so costs really shot up, which led to the cheaper foreign jade coming in to the global market. And because of that Fong Tian jade's processing quality just rapidly fall. It was hard for any of the mines to continue to run. Then, because of this one after another they accepted that the time to close had finally come. That's when our once-thriving Taiwan jade industry became history. It's only a memory that everyone shared. The heyday that felt it would go on forever, lasted only a short 9 years. Only after 1984 did the mining rights shift to Li Xin Mining company. Now, this mine mainly mines serpentine and that's mostly only to provide China Steel with a powder that helps as a melting agent in their steel.
The sudden stop in Taiwan's nephrite production opened the doors to imports from Canada and Korea, to meet the need of this processing company.
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1895-1945