Chapter 0265 – Kunlun Mountain Jade Picker

“Adira, this is one of my juniors. I brought him here to meet the Jade King, Xiao Zhuang, you can just call him Uncle Tian.” After Ancient and the visitor hugged, he pulled Zhuang Rui behind him and introduced the visitor.

Zhuang Rui sized up the other party, this Uncle Tian was not tall and a bit thin, but had a full head of black hair and eyes with a godly look, if he didn’t look closely at the wrinkles on his face, at first glance it looked like he was only in his early fifties, but Zhuang Rui knew that he was two years older than Old Master Gu!

After Zhuang Rui chatted with Tian Bo with the courtesy of a junior, the crowd walked towards the outside of the airport.

To the outside of the airport, has parked a few cars waiting, Zhuang Rui and the old man is divided into two cars, he was arranged in the back of a Land Cruiser, driving is a young man in Sichuan, called Zhang Dazhi, younger than Zhuang Rui on two years. Previously in Xinjiang as a car soldier, after the discharge to stay in the local car, people are very talkative, Zhuang Rui words are asked and answered.

In the car Zhuang Rui learned that this is called Adila’s old man in Xinjiang, is a Uyghur, sixty-two years old this year, this is his Uyghur identity, he also has a Chinese name, called Tian Dajun.

In the Xinjiang jade industry, Adila can be described as a legendary figure known to all, and people in the industry respectfully refer to him as the “Jade King”, which shows his influence in the Xinjiang jade industry.

In the early eighties, due to the thousands of years of jade mining in Xinjiang, the resources were extremely shrinking, and the jade mines along the Kunlun Mountains were closing down, and the industry claimed that the Hetian jade mine resources had been depleted, leading to a panic in the jade industry.

At that time, with years of experience in the Kunlun Mountain jade mining, Adila took the lead in proposing: “Hetian jade is distributed according to the watermelon Templates” geological theory, so that the Hetian jade mining industry peaks and turns, a new life, new mines continue to emerge, the output has been rising every year.

Adilah now to “China Hotan Jade expert” identity, as the executive director of the National Jade Association, this executive but than Zhuang Rui’s that director, the weight of the much heavier, and also served as the deputy director of the Xinjiang Jade Committee and other positions. The leadership of the company became the leading boss of the jade industry in Xinjiang.

“Is that why you guys call him the ‘Jade King’?”

According to Zhang Dazhi, it was still more than an hour’s drive from where Adira lived, and Zhuang Rui wanted to hear more about Adira’s story.

“The old man is a man of God, all the locals here say that he is a fire-eyed man.”

“Fire-eyed golden eyes?!”

Zhuang Rui froze for a moment at his words, his face became a bit odd, that said, this word used on him is more or less the same.

“That’s not true! The old man has more than a dozen mining team under him, just last year, he looked good at a mining site, but the pit road dug into the inside to go more than 60 meters, are not seen out of the shadow of the jade, a lot of people are anxious, said it is a waste mine, the old man force to argue, insisted on digging deeper and two meters, hey, guess what?”

Zhang Dazhi brought up the story of the Jade King, it was an eyebrow-raising question to himself. Did not wait for Zhuang Rui to answer, then said: “On this two-meter distance, the miracle appeared, the whole extracted out of four pieces of jade, the largest one weighs ten tons. There is more God, in not yet seen the shadow of the jade before, the old man had predicted: this nest mine can be extracted 60 tons of jade, and as expected, after the extraction of a calculation, the whole 61 tons, brother Zhuang, you say this is not the eyes of fire?”

“Is it really that divine?”

After listening to Zhang Dazhi’s words, Zhuang Rui was skeptical in his heart, is this old man the same as himself, he can see through the surface of the material and see the substance inside?

“Of course, our Jade King went up to the Kunlun Mountains to pick jade when he was more than ten years old, and in these decades, no one dares to say that he is better than him in this territory of Xinjiang.”

Zhang Dazhi, who held his boss in high esteem, added, “In this part of Xinjiang, the Jade King is an authority in the identification of jade and jade artifacts. He can tell in one breath the authenticity, superiority, origin, and price of the jade he sees. The seller in Hotan area sells seed material, the buyer who is familiar with the old master in the field, will always call to invite him to the scene, as long as the old master opens his mouth to offer, that is the nail, the seller is no longer ‘asking for money’, the buyer does not ‘pay back money on the spot’. Know why? This is the authority effect. The second is the degree of integrity, the third is charisma.”

Zhang Dazhi said this very smoothly, it looks like more than just talking to Zhuang Rui alone, when he spoke, his face was full of pride, as if being able to drive for the Jade King is also a thing that is doubly honorable.

“Then he also invited the ancient master to do?” Zhuang Rui somewhat puzzled, according to Zhang Dazhi’s statement, Adira in the soft jade above the appreciation attainments, absolutely not worse than the ancient.

“I don’t know, anyway, Ancient came at this time last year, it should be looking for the mining team to come up to the mountain, specially inviting Councilor Ancient to come, right?” Zhang Dazhi’s words were a bit different from what Ancient had said, it seemed that the purpose of this visit was definitely not just to appraise a piece of jade.

“A mining team? Not a jade mining team?”

“No, at this time of the year, several teams will be organized to go up to the mountains to look for ore veins, and only after the ore veins are identified, will the jade mining team be sent out, with a different division of labor, but there are also some jade miners that specialize in picking up the mountain flowing water material, that needs to run all over the mountain. It’s very hard work.”

Zhang Dazhi explained the difference between the two to Zhuang Rui, he stayed in Xinjiang for quite a few years, and sometimes he also went up to the mountains with the jade miners to try his luck, knowing that if he could find a piece of good jade, then this life is a life of eating and drinking without worrying.

Comparatively speaking, the search for veins and scattered jade quarrymen have to work harder, they have to withstand the scorching sun and plateau reaction, searching for jade in the deep mountains, and sometimes they often have to go into the mountains for several months, and only come out from the mountains in the winter.

The car went through the city of Hotan. Drove to the outskirts, drove in from a place that looked like a farm, Zhuang Rui found that there was a guard post next to the gate, two young physically strong young men stood by the gate, the most surprising thing to Zhuang Rui was that they were actually carrying a gun behind their backs.

“Da Zhi, those two men at the gate, they are also from the army?”

Zhuang Rui looked at the clothes passed on those two men, it was a camouflage uniform, but there was no shoulder badge or rank, just daring to carry a gun in broad daylight, it should be someone from the state department, right?

“No, Brother Zhuang, those two people are from the mine protection team, both of them have registered in the public security department and have a gun license.”

Zhang Dazhi spoke out to Zhuang Rui answer, in the Hetian jade mine near the environment is more complex, not only is the local people mining jade mine, there are gold diggers from all over the country, more people will inevitably be a mixture of good and bad, there are some people desperate to do something with no money hook.

So some big jade merchants, will form their own mining team, like Adila such identity of people, do not know how many people with bad intentions in the heart of the mind, and Adila’s trading place, generally in his place of residence, where placed a lot of value of the jade, so the arrangement of an armed force in this guard, of course, this is in the local public security department to report and get permission.

The car drove forward again more than two hundred meters, stopped in front of a small three-story building, Zhuang Rui saw, on both sides of the road placed in the size of various shapes of stone, these stones are basically yellowish-white, some from the surface. Can see the white jade flesh, must be these are Hetian jade material.

Get off the car and enter into the small building inside, facing the living room table, has begun to put on the wine and food, a few Uyghur women hands and feet neatly set the meal, then retired, the large room, leaving the old man, Zhuang Rui, Adira and a forty-something middle-aged man.

The meal is very sumptuous, Xinjiang roast meat, big dish chicken, and Xinjiang produced Elite wine, ancient and Adila very familiar, from time to time also use the Uyghur language and Adila said a few words, and the middle-aged man did not leave Zhuang Rui out of the cold, could not help but persuade the wine, a section of the meal down, Zhuang Rui is already with four or five points of drunkenness.

After finishing the meal, someone took Zhuang Rui and the old man went to the second floor room to rest, drunkenness on the head of Zhuang Rui slept for four or five hours before waking up, out of the room, Zhuang Rui stood on the second floor to see the old man and Adeela is sitting in the living room, in front of the ground, placed a hundred and ten pounds of stone.

“Xiao Zhuang, up? You’ve slept for quite a long time this time!” Ancient heard a loud noise from upstairs, once he looked up and saw Zhuang Rui, he waved to him, signaling him to come down.

“Master Gu, sorry, I overslept.” Zhuang Rui walked downstairs and scratched his head a little embarrassed.

“It’s okay, young people, it’s normal to sleep a little deeper, like us old men, we can’t sleep even if we want to sleep a little more, come …… young man, take a look at this piece of material how is it?”

Adira old man to Zhuang Rui also have a few points of curiosity, from the mouth of an old friend to hear, this young man on the jade has a very keen feeling, in the previous period of time on the Pingzhou jadeite disk, but the harvest is not small, he let Zhuang Rui look at this piece of jade, is also a bit of examination Zhuang Rui’s meaning in it.

“Uncle Tian, I still have a little bit of hands-on experience with jadeite, but this nephrite, see but not much, if you ask me, that’s paper.”

Although Zhuang Rui has the certainty to see the jade flesh inside this material, but for the type and quality of Hetian jade, he really does not know much, soft jade inside he has seen the ancient once gave Qian Yao Si that a sheep fat jade pendant, but at that time also did not look closely.

“It’s okay, read as much as you can and say as much as you can, what are you afraid of!” Ancient in the side said, he brought Zhuang Rui to, is to let him long knowledge to come, the ground this piece of material, but just to give him a live teaching.

Zhuang Rui heard after also did not pretend, squat down to measure up this piece of Hetian jade material to.

Friends know, jadeite jadeite raw stone, all have skin, and through the skin can be judged inside the direction of the jadeite and the number of quality, it can be said that the skin is the key to jadeite gambling.

And Hetian jade is naturally a representative of the soft jade, different from jade, Hetian jade material, not necessarily with the skin, many Hetian jade jade flesh, are exposed on the outside, in the past a lot of jade quarrying people, from the river directly to pick up high-quality Hetian jade.

Another point and jadeite is different, jadeite is from abroad, and Hotan Jade is a long history in the country, has a long history and unique meaning, throughout the ages, people put all the good things to jade metaphor.

Since ancient times, our country has a “jade country” reputation, the ancients regarded jade as treasure, as a precious jewelry to wear, the ancient medical books that “jade is the beauty of the stone, taste sweetness and flatness non-toxicity” and that jade is the human body is the storage of the most abundant material. It is believed that sucking jade, with the help of saliva and its synergistic effect, and thus jade is not only used as jewelry, ornaments, decorative purposes, but also used to maintain health and fitness.

Since ancient times, the imperial concubines of various dynasties have been using jade to maintain their health, while Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty was addicted to jade, and Yang Guifei was a jade addicted to summer heat.

In ancient China, jade is the communication between heaven and earth, worship ghosts and gods ancestors of the gods and goddesses of the earth and earth, is the power and status of the material table micro, is the dead body embalming mortuary utensils, but also scholars and gentlemen clean and clear, brand themselves, the pursuit of the good feelings of the personality symbols.

Ancient master and Zhuang Rui together, said more, in fact, or nephrite, so Zhuang Rui although not more hands, but from the theoretical point of view, he is also considered to know a lot about nephrite.

Soft jade is roughly divided into mountain material, mountain stream and son of jade these kinds, mountain material is produced in the mountains of the primary mine, such as white jade mountain material, green and white jade mountain material, etc., Jade Prince they mined, mainly is the mountain material.

The mountain stream refers to those large pieces of jade that are weathered and crumbled from the primary ore and carried by the river to the middle and upper reaches of the river. The stream is characterized by its proximity to the primary ore, its larger size, and its surface edges and corners that have been rounded after a long period of time by the river.

Zi Jade, also known as Zi Jade and seed material, is distributed in the riverbed and terraces on both sides of the river, with the jade exposed on the surface or buried in the ground. Zi Jade is characterized by smaller lumps, often ovoid, with smooth surfaces, and because of thousands of years of river scouring and sifting, Zi Jade is generally of the best quality.

In the lower reaches of the river, there are various colors of nephrite, white nephrite seed, green nephrite seed, green nephrite seed, nephrite seed, jasper seed, yellow nephrite seed, but no matter what color, as long as it is the best quality seed, in the current jade market, a gram of it is as high as tens of thousands of dollars, which is many times more expensive than the gold.

Jade market is hot, now no less than the jadeite market, before 2002, Xinjiang’s jade merchants are pulling sacks of seed material to the mainland sales, you can pick, but now, only these people show up, the jade merchants who have heard of the wind are holding millions of dollars, but also can only buy a small box of material.

Old man Gu told Zhuang Rui one thing, Xinjiang’s jade merchants arrived in Zhonghai, basically live in Tianshan Hotel, where you can often see a few Jiangsu and Zhejiang bosses partnering up, holding boxes of cash, and anxiously knocking on doors in Tianshan Hotel’s corridors.

Jade merchants in Xinjiang are famous for their unity, and the ancient family can break off Xu’s Jewelry and Wang Roller’s jade raw materials, but also with his good relations with Adira is inseparable, to Adira’s position in the jade world, all the jade merchants in Xinjiang are given a few points of face.

Ancient and the reason why Adira let Zhuang Rui look at this piece of material, because some nephrite and jadeite, as well as with the skin, Zhuang Rui know, Hetian jade skin, generally divided into color skin, sugar skin and stone skin of these three.

Color skin refers to the Hetian son of jade exterior distribution of a layer of jade skin, there are many kinds of colors, the jade industry to a variety of colors and the name of these jades, such as black skin, deerskin and so on, from the skin color can be seen in the quality of the son of jade, such as black skin, deerskin and so on, more for the top grade white jade good material.

The same kind of quality of the son of jade, such as with the autumn pear and other skin color, the value is higher, the thickness of the color skin and emerald is different, is very thin, generally less than 1 mm, and the color skin of the form is also a variety of different kinds of, some into the cloud-like, some for the vein-like, and some into the scattered dots.

The formation of color skin is due to the transformation of ferrous oxide in Hetian jade into iron trioxide under oxidizing conditions, so it is secondary. Experienced jade collectors go to the middle and lower reaches of the river to look for sub-jade with color skin, while going upstream, the chances of finding sub-jade with color skin are rare.

The so-called sugar skin refers to a layer of yellowish-brown and sauce-colored jade skin distributed on the exterior of Hetian jade mountain material. Because the color resembles that of brown sugar, the jade with sugar skin is called sugar jade. Sugar jade sugar skin thickness is large, from a few centimeters to twenty to thirty centimeters have, often white jade or green jade surrounded by a transitional relationship, sugar jade produced in the ore body near the fissure.

Sugar skin is a little more gambling, because the inside of the jade quality is difficult to judge, may be the best white jade, may also be ordinary green jade, some jade miners pick sugar skin after the jade, but also often take out to others to gamble, and they themselves are not unraveled.

The last kind is the stone skin, mostly refers to the Hetian jade mountain material exterior surrounded by the surrounding rock, in the mining time, with the jade mined out, attached to the surface of the jade, this stone wrapped in jade stone and jade boundaries are clear, it is very easy to separate them, the stone skin is also the easiest to recognize the quality of the jade of a kind of material.

Now in front of Zhuang Rui this piece of material, is a piece of mountain running water sugar skin jade material, and jadeite raw stone outer skin is different, this piece of material is very smooth, touch without a little tricky feeling, Zhuang Rui guess, this should be because of once by the river washed the reason!

For the Hetian jade material, Zhuang Rui is not a little bit of experience, in around this piece of material after a while, Zhuang Rui lowered his head, the eyes of the aura suddenly penetrated into the yellow-brown stone inside, the stone layer by layer uncovered, the jade material in the situation, suddenly revealed in front of Zhuang Rui.

This piece of stone skin is not very thick, only four or five centimeters of appearance, in the middle of the stone, a whole piece of milky white jade flesh, appeared in Zhuang Rui’s field of vision, so that Zhuang Rui is a little bit surprised that the aura has not changed for a long time in the contact with the jade flesh, actually had a change.

In the middle of the jade material that emits a soft white light, a breath with warmth and Zhuang Rui eyes aura fusion together, although only a very small trace of breath into the eyes, but still let Zhuang Rui comfortable exceptionally, as if with a hot towel in the eyes, that kind of hot steam feeling, let Zhuang Rui comfortable almost moaned out.

Just this large piece of jade flesh, can for Zhuang Rui aura absorption is very little, only so hair-like a trace, but this also let Zhuang Rui overjoyed, at least he knows, his eyes of the aura can continue to increase, rather than like now so stagnant.

After stabilizing his mind for a while, Zhuang Rui raised his head and said, “Master Gu, Uncle Tian, this piece of jade is material from Shan Liu Shui, it is larger in size, and wrapped with sugar skin on the outside, but it is often said that the white jade seeds are mostly small, and the possibility of this piece of jade coming out of mutton fat jade, is not very big, but the outer skin of this one is moist and slippery, and the performance is still good, and if you don’t want me to say something, I would guess that it is greenish-white jade inside, but the quality should be good. But the quality should be good.”

Zhuang Rui said these words in a moderate way, the origin of the jade, the outer skin and the performance of the jade material, with his age and insight, he can say this insight, but also let the two old men nodded their heads in succession.

“Well said, it’s similar to my idea, the possibility of coming out with green and white jade is relatively high, Adira, such a big piece of green and white jade material, it’s not lower than the price of normal sheep’s fat jade, are you still not satisfied?”

Elder Gu also gave his own assessment after Zhuang Rui finished speaking, he shared Zhuang Rui’s opinion, this piece of jade, basically it is impossible to produce sheepskin white jade, if the very best jade was that easy to come by, He Shi Bi wouldn’t have been passed down through the ages.

“Oh, ancient brother, you also know, called you to come is not entirely to see this piece of material ah! Beijing is so hot in the summer, you can just stay here with me for a month, there are plenty of fresh cantaloupes and grapes in this season!”

Adira on this piece of jade, has long been in mind, he called out to the old man to come, old friends get together is one aspect, the other is that tomorrow to find the vein of the team will be on the mountain, he is trying to ask the old man to give the presiding over the ceremony, for the jade quarrying people, this is the need for respected seniors in the line to preside over the ancient Tianfeng every year to come here, but also more for this matter.

“Come on, this year I do not have the opportunity to live in your place, go back to help this kid carve a piece of jade, and so on later after the opportunity to say it! Tomorrow after hosting the ceremony, will return to Beijing.”

Xinjiang’s summer is very cool, Gu Tianfeng used to live here for a period of time every year, but this year to give Zhuang Rui jade carving, but can’t live more.

“Senior, my object is not urgent, you live here for a while! Besides, that piece of jadeite I also brought, no you can carve it here.” Zhuang Rui was a bit embarrassed, because of this little matter of his own, letting Elder Gu run both ways.

“That’s right, Xiao Zhuang is right, ancient brother, I have all the tools here, you just stay here, we old brothers can chat about nothing!”

Adira also spoke out to persuade, he and Ancient Tianfeng were old friends for decades, and they only saw each other once or twice a year, plus he had recently handed over his business to his juniors to take care of, he also wanted to have an old friend to chat with as a companion.

“Where to carve is not a problem, but Xiao Zhuang, can you be patient and wait here?”

Old man Gu also heard some interest, but these several pendants if carved out plus polishing and other steps are completed, is also to be ten days and a half months, he was afraid that Zhuang Rui can not wait.

“This matter is simple, tomorrow let Xiao Zhuang follow the jade mining team on the mountain.” Elder Adira gave an idea.

“Uncle Tian, you just said that the team that will go up the mountain tomorrow is the team that will look for mineral veins, how come there is also a jade mining ah?”

Zhuang Rui asked in puzzlement, he was also a bit curious about the mining of nephrite, he heard that most of the superb goat’s fat jade was picked up from the mountains or the riverside, and very few of them were dug out from the mines.

“Oh, looking for veins and jade mining to find a season on the mountain, when the day is colder, there is no way to go into the mountains to stay long, how about it, do you want to go to see it? By the way, the jade that is harvested from the mountain can all belong to you.” Seeing Zhuang Rui wanting to go, Adira encouraged vigorously from the side.

“Alright, Elder Master, you can stay at ease! I’ll follow the jade quarrying team up the mountain to have a look around.”

In fact, Zhuang Rui didn’t care much about the ownership of the jade, but wanted to go and see it, the legend of this jade picker had been passed down for thousands of years.

The old man sniffed a strange expression on his face, and asked Zhuang Rui: “You want to go? That’s ten days and half a month that you won’t necessarily be able to come back.”

Zhuang Rui nodded and replied, “Well, I’ll follow to have a look, Tian Bo said, this picked up jade are all their own, I’m lucky, maybe I can pick up a piece of suet jade!”

In Zhuang Rui’s heart, but the trip into the mountains as a tour, this time a lot of things happened, he felt that he needed to think about it in a quiet place, as well as their future career planning, can not be every day this way to run around blindly, right?

“Good job, young people have impulse, I’ll let people prepare your traveling bag to go.” Adira saw Zhuang Rui agreed, happily stood up and walked out.

“Traveling bag?” Zhuang Rui looked at Elder Gu in puzzlement.

The old master looked at Zhuang Rui with a smirk and said, “Kid, do you think jade picking is traveling? The environment inside the mountain is very complicated, in the past every year there were jade pickers who went into the mountain and stayed inside forever, these years the equipment is better, the danger is much smaller, but definitely not as comfortable as you think, what’s the matter, still want to go?”

The work of going into the mountains to look for and jade ore veins and jade mining is very difficult and dangerous, the requirements for the accompanying personnel’s body, knowledge and quality of survival in the wilderness are all very high, don’t look at Zhuang Rui’s long and tall, but the old man of Gu’s heart is still really so uneasy.

“Go!”

Zhuang Rui firmly nodded, the legend of the Kunlun Mountains he has heard a lot, now there is an opportunity to enter the mountain to explore the mystery, if not go, later will certainly regret.

“Xiao Zhuang, you will follow Da Zhi into the mountain tomorrow, he has been there a few times, he is very experienced, and you young people will be able to talk.”

As he was talking, Elder Adira pulled the driver who drove for Zhuang Rui at noon, walked in, and patted Zhang Dazhi’s shoulder forcefully, saying, “Xiao Zhuang is my honored guest, you must take good care of him!”

“Uncle Tian, I’m but two years older than Dazhi!” Zhuang Rui was made to cry and laugh by Adira’s words.

“The big mountains are not like outside, it’s based on experience, Xiao Zhuang, when you enter the mountains, you should listen to this youngster’s advice more, don’t make up your own mind about anything, or else, you shouldn’t go.”

Elder Gu boarded up his face and said very seriously to Zhuang Rui.