Sought after Imperial Gem = Pure White Jade

[Cecil Lee]

Mother of all Jade: Pure white Jade or known as "Imperial Gem"

[Cecil Lee]

SOURCE & CREDIT: TODAY, MONDAY JANUARY 31, 2011

A much sought-after 'imperial gem'

BELING - High prices of rare white Jade are creating a new gold rush on China's far western border.

Over the last 5,000 years of Chinese history, it has come to mean all things to both men and women. Prized more highly than gold, a lump of polished jade is said to ward off evil spirits, symbolise female purity - and provide the perfect gift to flatter an imperial ruler or bribe a corrupt official.

Now, though, the crystalline gemstone - used in everything from sculpture and jewellery through to axe-heads and opium pipes - has become a victim of the very power and wealth it embodies. Thanks to China's rapid economic growth. demand for the "imperial gem" is soaring. pushing prices up tenfold in the last decade and exhausting what little supplies are still available in the jade-panning valleys of China's remote far west.
"Ten years ago, a small pendant made of mutton fat jade would have cost around 2.000 yuan (5390), Now, It's at least 20,000 yuan," said jade salesman Zhang

The price of white jade has increased ten-fold in the last decade. BLOOMBERG

Xian Kuo, referring to the cream-coloured, marbled stone found near his town of Hotan in Xinjiang province, which is more highly-prized than the more common green variety. "It's not just the limited amount of high-quality jade that. has caused the price to increase. It's the fact that people see it as an investment, such when they own a piece they don't want to sell it, which means very little good second-hand jade comes on the market."

A former Silk Road trading hub that sits on the edge of the vast Tak-lamakan Desert, the oasis town of Hotan has been famous for its jade for thousands of years.

Today, the demand is such that it is become the site of a Klondyke-style "jade rush", the biggest in its history. From dawn until dusk, the banks of the Jade Dragon Kashgar River on Hotan's eastern outskirts are lined with men and women, young and old, scouting the river for the jade stones that are washed down from deposits in the mostly inaccessible 7,000m-high Kunlun.

Mountains that straddle the Xin-jiang-Tibet border.

In this isolated rural region, where the average annual income is only 3,500 yuan, jade-hunting is widely seen as a way out of poverty.

"You can be lucky and make your fortune in a day, or you can spend 10 years by the river without finding anything" said Mr Mohammed Ali, who has been selling jade for seven years. Standing in front of a metal tray of jade stones submerged in water at Hotan's bustling jade markct, he is one of the many who have abandoned working an the farms that surround the city to try and cash in on the demand for Jade.

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