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 Su Ming-Liang
Date: December 15, 2007
Place: At the shop "Village Head's Jade"
The trip carrying jade down the mountain took 3-4 hours. There was a huge profit. One trip's worth of jade earned several thousand NT. In the heyday there were a lot of jade thieves ("mountain rats"). So, the thieves were in cahoots with the jade mine workers so after an explosion, the highest quality jade was pocketed by the miners and in private passed over to the "mountain rats." These "rats" mostly went up the mountain at night to a set place and got the jade. After they got down, they traded it to the businessmen. In this way the best jade was traded privately outside the mine's control. The actual mines then got only a tiny amount of the profit.
n the later period, jade quantities on the market went up. Some shady characters took cracked jade and treated it with wax to hide the crack. For this reason the image of Fong Tian jade was tarnished. At that time the higher-quality Canadian and Siberian jade came into our market and Fong Tian jade value dropped more.
These few years, under the governement's support and media reporting Fong Tian jade has begun to hold its head up again. Here I mostly display raw jade. Each rock is like a landscape which shows off the natural beauty of jade. There are 5 kinds of rock we find together" asbestos, serpentine, cat's eye nephrite, waxy nephrite and jadeite. Each has their own beauty, but you see when they are together the effect is striking. Those who see this can project from their minds beautiful landscapes, a different one for each person looking. It's quite fascinating.
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Cai Wan-Yi