Two thousand years ago, Qu Yuan dreamed of traveling in Kunlun with his feet on Xiangyun. One morning more than two thousand years later, we sat in a jeep in Beijing and embarked on a journey to find the magical Kunlun jade with the ancient myth of Kunlun Mountain in our mind.
Originated in the Kunlun Mountain on the Pamirs, it runs through Central Asia and looks like a giant python. It is known as the "backbone of Asia". Kunlun Mountain enters Qinghai and Sichuan from Xinjiang and Tibet. It is more than 3,000 kilometers long in Xinjiang and Qinghai, with an average elevation of about 5,600 meters.
Kun means high, and Lun has the appearance of buckling and knotting. Kunlun is the most mysterious place among all the famous mountains and rivers. In the extraordinary imagination of the ancients, it was a huge uplift on the earth. In ancient books, Kunlun was either called a market or a hill. It is the "ancestor of Wanshan" and "ancestor of Long Mai", so naturally there will be gods living in this magical place. The earliest legend is that there was a god with a tiger face and a long tail guarding it, and later she became a beautiful woman-the Queen Mother of the West. According to legend, she is the fairy Lord of Kunlun Mountain. The "Yaochi" recorded in many ancient books is the Black Sea at the head of the Kunlun River, with an altitude of 4,300 meters, which is the birthplace of the Kunlun Sect of Taoism.
As the first mountain in China, Kunlun Mountain has left countless beautiful legends and mysteries for thousands of years.
* * * Gong Feilong flew into the air and crashed into Kunlun Mountain (not Zhoushan). There was a loud bang, and Kunlun Mountain broke in the middle and the mountain collapsed. Heaven and earth have changed greatly, mountains and rivers have moved, and the earth has collapsed to the southeast. The sky fell to the northwest, and the sun, moon and stars changed their positions.
The Himalayan orogeny hundreds of millions of years ago may have realized ancient myths.
From the Archaean strata composed of gneiss, slate and gneiss granite that appeared on the earth about 4.5 billion years ago to the Cenozoic strata formed by folds, metamorphism and faults caused by Himalayan movement in Asia, the earth has experienced many generations of crustal changes and produced various types of rocks. According to contemporary scientific investigation, the intensity of geological plate activity of Himalayan orogeny is unique in the world. The intersection of Kunlun Mountain and Himalayan Mountain is also the intersection of two geological plates. With the continuous movement and collision, under the joint action of the huge extrusion pressure between plates and underground magma, the magical mineral structure, that is, the magical and unique Kunlun jade, was formed.
Pick jade Kunlun
Beijing Jeep sped all the way, aiming at Baodai Yeniugou and Andromeda Peak buried in the depths of Kunlun Mountain at an altitude of nearly 5,000 meters. From Golmud to Nachitai Qingquan, the altitude rose from 2800 meters to nearly 4000 meters. Kunlun Spring, located between Shasongwu Mountain and KeTagel, Bocage, is said to be the spring water used by the Queen Mother of the West to brew nectar. I think these springs from the depths of Kunlun must also come from the place where Kunlun jade came into contact with the cold jade body.
After drinking the bitter cold Kunlun Spring, we will cross the Kunlun River and go deep into the famous Yeniugou Kunlun jade mine.
It belongs to the part of the eastern edge of Kunlun Mountain that enters Qinghai, and is more than 300 kilometers away from Ruoqiang County in Xinjiang in the west, which is closely related to the geological and structural background along the East Kunlun Mountain, especially Ruoqiang and Qiemo.
As soon as I entered the Kunlun Valley, I saw the vast Kunlun Mountain, wrapped in silver and towering peaks. The sacred Kunlun Mountain once fascinated me so much, but when the off-road vehicle walked through the endless desert Gobi of Kunlun Mountain for a long time, it left me with the impression that it was endless and desolate everywhere, and it felt like it was far away from the world of another desolate planet, and it was even harder to imagine that the crystal-clear and moist Baoyu would be born here. Perhaps this is the true essence of Kunlun's majestic atmosphere, great depth and endless changes.
As soon as the car turned a valley, a strong wind suddenly blew on the wasteland, and sand got into the car and was everywhere. Soon, we were all covered with dust. Outside the jumping window, a group of Tibetan antelopes showed frightened eyes in the dust. This is an uninhabited area.
Yeniugou primary jade mine is located on a mountain peak in Yeniugou, with an altitude of more than 4,500 meters. For jade pickers in Kunlun, this is a place full of fatal temptations and unknowns. The white jade, clear white jade and sapphire produced in Yeniugou are fine in texture, rich in variety and large in volume, which are first-class materials, basically the same as Hetian jade, and many of them meet the standards of suet white jade. Especially its emerald green, grayish white and grayish purple varieties are extremely rare in Hetian jade. Once there was a man from Zhejiang who mined jade here and became a billionaire overnight. Attractive news floats across the plateau, and the Wild Cow Gully is like a huge magnetic field, attracting countless dream seekers.
We were out of breath when we climbed up the mining point along the winding mountain road. The mountains are covered with snow all the year round, and the white outline of the huge mountains makes us unable to open our eyes in the strong sunlight. Jade-like, shining like a mountain. Legend has it that jade is buried in a stone, which is hard for people to know, but the warm jade gas will rise in the air in the warm sunshine. The magical white in front of us creates a beautiful and confusing illusion, which makes people's thoughts suddenly disappear, as if they were incarnate.
On the working face as high as 100 meters, those jade miners formed a huge contrast with the mountains they dug out. From a distance, they are like sesame seeds scattered among rocks. Looking at those dark and moving figures, I suddenly feel that human beings are not only small compared with nature, but also have endless sighs in the face of their own huge projects: creation has become a part of nature, and what is left behind is often only loneliness, smallness and loss.
"The Book of Songs Xiaoya" "Stones from other mountains can attack jade." Mining rocks was called "attacking jade" in ancient times, which also means mining mountain jade, that is, mining primary jade ore, but the risk is great. Since ancient times, countless people have lost their money and their lives. Most of the jade diggers in Yeniugou of Kunlun Mountain are Hui people, who come from poor villages in Qinghai, Gansu and Ningxia. Han Xiao is one of them. He took me all the way down to the mine tens of meters deep. #p# header #e#
The height and width of this mine hole are only 1 meter, so we can only climb into the hole inch by inch. Before entering the cave, I imagined that the jade mines must be connected, the cave must be surrounded by jade, and jade can be used as a mirror. But we climbed all the way to the bottom of the cave and didn't see any trace of jade. After climbing out of the cave, I want to ask Han Xiao to teach me how to shoot the original jade vein. Looking at the mining face as high as 100 meters, Han provided a left hand that was "gnawed" by the stone and silently shook his head. He said that he had been mining here for more than a year and had not even seen a decent vein.
Before I came to the jade mine, I imagined that jade mining might be like marble mining, only then did I know how ignorant and ridiculous imagination was. First of all, unlike other minerals, jade minerals are intermittently hidden in the core, and the veins are really like clouds, smoke and fog in ancient poems. Occasionally exposed veins are wrapped in thick rock layers, so every time you take a piece of jade, you have to remove a lot of hard rocks wrapped outside the jade. This determines that jade pickers should not only work hard, but also have a pair of discerning eyes to distinguish the difference between jade and stone. The rock connected with jade is called Yugen. It seems that jade is actually a stone, which is the most difficult to distinguish. If you don't get it, all your previous efforts will be in vain.
Legend has it that the immortals of Kunlun Mountain planted Kunlun jade in the nursery, and after caring for 1000 years, they could secrete a drop of jade paste. However, jade is difficult to grow, and it is often suddenly destroyed when it is about to become paste, and hundreds of years of hard work are instantly wiped out. In my opinion, the jade pickers in Kunlun Mountain are more difficult to deal with than those immortals who grow jade. Gold and jade are priceless. Only when I saw those huge working faces, extremely difficult working environment, and their almost zero returns so far, did I know how difficult and arduous it was to get a treasure jade. In Yeniugou, a mine, dozens of people from Korea have been mining around the clock for more than a year, with a total investment of tens of millions of yuan. The lives of several jade miners have stayed here forever, but so far no jade has been mined. Is there really a supernatural power in charge of fate? Seeing the helpless eyes of Han provided and the dark mine, I finally understood the cruelty and soul-stirring of "gambling on jade".
The famous Yeniugou didn't let us see the true colors of Kunlun jade, and didn't even give me a chance to take excellent photos. Like the jade diggers on the mountain, we came back in vain this time.
Magic Kun fish
In the history of thousands of years in China, the definition of jade has always been vague and idealistic.
During the period of 1863, the French geologist Demo made a chemical examination based on a large number of Qing Dynasty Qianlong jades plundered by British and French allied forces from China, and found that there are two main jade materials in China: amphibole and pyroxene. Hornblende mainly comes from Kunlun mountain jade, and another pyroxene is Burmese jade, mainly Burmese jade.
Compared with Mohs relative hardness, Kunlun jade is slightly lower than jadeite, so it is called "nephrite" and jadeite is called "jadeite". Since then, China's unclear definition of jade for thousands of years has been made clear in geological sense: nephrite minerals distributed in Kunlun Mountain and Altun Mountain in China were formed by contact metasomatism between magnesium marble and intermediate-acid magma, which has nothing to do with ultrabasic rocks, and its origin is not regional metamorphism, but typical contact metasomatism.
According to the different crystal systems, amphibole minerals can be divided into two subcategories: amphibole and monoclinic amphibole. Monocline amphibole belongs to monoclinic crystal system, which mainly includes tremolite, actinolite and ordinary amphibole. When the main component of jade is tremolite, it is called tremolite jade. The research shows that the mineral composition of Kunlun jade is mainly tremolite, and the content is generally above 95%. This is very unique among nephrite found in the world.
In May 2005, according to Xinhua News Agency, a piece of Kunlun jade weighing nearly 9 tons was found in the mining area of Kunlun Baoyu Co., Ltd., Golmud City, Qinghai Province, which is the largest Kunlun jade boulder ever recorded and can be called "the king of Kunlun jade in China". According to experts, the famous Kunlun jade and Hetian jade are located in the same metallogenic belt. The east of Kunlun Mountain is called Kunlun Jade, and the north of the mountain is called Hetian Jade. The distance between them is only 300 kilometers, so Kunlun jade and Hetian jade are basically the same in material combination, occurrence and structural characteristics, which can be described as twin brothers in nature. Some top Kunlun jade, crystal clear, pure and flawless, without cracks and impurities, can even surpass Hetian jade.
Qinghai Kunlun jade is exquisite in texture, elegant and refreshing, good in oiliness and high in transparency, and can be divided into white jade, gray jade, sapphire, leucorrhea with green, leucorrhea with sugar and so on. The mineral, chemical composition and microstructure of Kunlun jade in Qinghai province were analyzed by X-ray powder diffraction and electron probe. It is found that the main structural types are felt structure, microfiber cryptocrystalline texture, microfiber structure, microfiber cryptocrystalline texture, microfiber structure and radial fiber structure. In particular, Kunlun jade "Bai Cuijia" is a unique and peculiar variety. Jade color with green in white, delicate and unique texture, gorgeous and rich color, makes people feel refreshed and beautiful.
The origin of Qinghai jade is near Yaochi, the legendary Queen Mother of the West. Legend has it that Kunlun jade also has the extraordinary effect of eliminating disasters and avoiding disasters.
Although these legends are idealistic and superstitious, through scientific detection, Kunlun jade contains many trace elements such as selenium, zinc, copper, cobalt and manganese. Wearing jade for a long time, trace elements that are very beneficial to human health are gradually absorbed by the human body, maintaining the balance of various elements in the body, and can really play a role in getting rid of diseases and strengthening the body.
The research of modern technology in bioengineering department of Southeast University shows that human body will produce temperature field, magnetic field and electric field, thus forming "biological information field". This "biological information field" and the biological wave generated by jade have peculiar photoelectric effect, which can make people "remove moderate heat, relieve annoyance, moisten heart and lungs, help voice and throat, nourish hair, nourish five internal organs, soothe the nerves, dredge blood vessels and clear eyes and ears".
Jo Yeo-jeong's "Gu Yu Bian" "I'm afraid this is the result of concentration, not irrational words. The ancient Gai people regarded jade as extremely important, and Pei Wan moved with his ancestors. He must be very careful in his every move. Look before you leap, look before you leap. If so, there will be fewer troubles and fewer accidents. In other words, if you are caught accidentally, you are lucky if you have reliable spiritual protection. Therefore, Lao Yu can protect himself. " In other words, people who wear jade articles attach great importance to jade articles, so their spirit is extremely focused. Even if you are accidentally caught, you may be lucky because you are focused. Jade keeps you safe. Considering from the spiritual level, as a belief, it reflects the common desire of human beings to pursue beauty. If superstition is excluded, scientific analysis does make sense.
Nephrite produced in Qinghai can be said to be an important event in China jade market since 1990. With the passage of time, the origin of Qinghai jade and Xinjiang jade has been diluted, because the boundary between Qinghai and Xinjiang is only an administrative division. From the gemological point of view, the quality of nephrite in Qinghai has completely reached the recognized grading standard of Hetian jade, which can be included in the category of Hetian jade like Xinjiang jade produced in Ruoqiang, Qiemo and Kashi. Since 1999, the high-quality old pit materials of Qinghai nephrite white jade and blue white jade have been widely recognized by the market. Coupled with the increasingly scarce resources, the price of high-quality Qinghai white jade raw materials has soared from 1992 to several thousand yuan or even ten thousand yuan per kilogram. In this regard, many people regret not knowing Qinghai nephrite early and missed the business opportunity when its price was low. At present, Qinghai nephrite is far from as brilliant as Hetian jade, because of the differences in cultural and geographical background, but in the near future, with the increasing scarcity of resources, Qinghai nephrite will have a higher status and value.