As a girl in Montana, I remember seeing jewelry brought from Alaska.  A green stone in a ring was $5.00.  It was nephrite jade.  Most nephrite jade found its use in carvings, utensils and as barter material.  It has a dullness of color and a waxy texture. 

The most expensive jade is jadeite.  It’s primary use is for jewelry.  The term “Imperial Green Jade” immediately comes to mind. The primary source of Jadeite is Myanmar, Guatemala and Russia.  My first experience with jadeite was 28 years ago in Hong Kong.  We were importing gems from the orient and made an acquaintance with Joson. He began his career as a gem dealer buying jade in China and importing it to Hong Kong.  He showed us a small green stone.  It was smaller than my fingernail.  Its wholesale price was $50,000.00.  This was the beginning of my world of Yu.  Jadeite has the greatest variety of colors.  The primary colors of occurrence and value are green and lavender.  The other colors are red, yellow, white and black or combinations of these colors.

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Nephrite is one of the oldest gemstones.  It is found in archeological sites in China dating back seven thousand years.  Its use was for barter.  It was money.  It was decorative.  It was spiritual.  There is an interesting Chinese story about its origin. The storm god watched its children fending off wild animals below on Earth.  The children suffered and died and had no defense.  The god took pity and grasped a rainbow in one hand and forged it into jade and cast it to the earth as axes.  The people picked up this awesome, tough stone and defended themselves.  They now had protection and would call this “the Stone of Heaven”.

The Pi disc is one of most important carvings found in China.  There are two types.  One has a window or opening in the disc.  Its use is to speak to the heavens.  The actual Pi shaped disc looks like the Chinese character for the sun.  It is a circle with a dot in the center.  The actual Chinese character for jade is three lines connected by a perpendicular line with a mark below.  It comes from three pieces of jade tied together with a string and a clapper below, a jade bell.  This character is also the root symbol for king.

Chinese Jade is found in the Kunlun Mountains.  The Kunlun Mountains were part of the country of Turkistan.  With the end of WWII, Turkistan became part of China.  There are no jade mines, as we know them. The weathered mountains release boulders from the softer stones.  These boulders tumble into the rivers.  The jade pickers find the stones in the rivers.  There are not many months to pick the Jade.  It is too cold. 

Jade commerce isn’t always safe and easy.  When we think of Golden Triangle, we always think about the drugs of opium and heroin.  Actually, the finest jade, Burmese jadeite is smuggled through the mountains of this Golden Triangle on donkeys.  The smugglers find their way into Northern Thailand.  They sell this jadeite in the city of Chaing Mai. This is the black market.  The legal purchases are at auction in Rangoon. The Myanmar government controls the auctions.  At times, windows are cut in the boulders to tease the purchasers.  Perhaps the purple continues through the boulder, but.......

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