Jiulong smiled: "Boss Afu, don't worry, is there boiling water here?"

Kowloon was indeed thirsty and wanted to beg for a glass of water.

"Look at my brain, it's full of stones, boiling water is available, I'll boil it right away, make a cup of tea first. ”

Ah Fu was very quick to bring the electric kettle to boil water.

There is a tea table at the entrance of this warehouse, and after the water boils, Ah Fu is very skilled in brewing kung fu tea.

Kowloon will not let go of the opportunity, ask Ah Fu to talk about why he likes Taishan jade, and how Taishan jade is in the sea.

Ah Fu smiled: "I also realized it as an afterthought, if I had known a few years earlier, I would have made a fortune a long time ago." ”

Talking about the history of Taishan Jade, Ah Fu had a regretful expression on his face, he couldn't have imagined that the Naqin Village where he was located, where his ancestors had been born to the sea for generations, had been poor because of stones, and would have become rich because of stones in the past two years.

But this turning point in fate came at least ten years late.

When Ah Fu was very young, the Naqin people began to pick up stones all over the mountains, but the villagers always realized that every time they "picked up sesame seeds and then picked up watermelons".

At first, it was crystal, and at that time, the local villagers specially excavated crystal, and threw aside the yellow wax stone and seed material at the bottom of the pit.

It wasn't until 1996 that a Teochew man came to Naqin and found "Taishan Yellow Wax Stone", so he asked local fishermen to help him collect it.

After these yellow wax stones were transported to Chaozhou, they were named "Chaozhou wax stones" and sold to the outside world.

In the past two years, Taishan wax stone has spread rapidly and been purchased in Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, and the mining industry has entered a peak period.

In the beginning, the people of Naqin often laughed at these people who came from other places to buy stones, but later found that yellow wax stone was more valuable than crystal, so they repeated mining, trying to find yellow wax stone from the place where the crystal had been mined, and when they saw the seeds, they threw them aside.

In 2000, another Guangzhou man came to the same place, bought a large number of yellow wax stone seeds dug out of granite cracks, and invited carvers from Fujian to screen, carve and sell the stone.

Ah Fu told Kowloon that Taishan jade resembles Shoushan stone, so it is loved by Zhejiang people, and many experts in Taiwan, Fujian and other places who play Shoushan stone also look at Taishan jade differently.

It was only then that Naqin realized that stones were treasures and flocked to the main producing areas of Sanshiwan and Huanghuawan.

For more than a month, hundreds of people dug and dug these two pits several times a day, and nearly a thousand mountain pits around them were also searched.

For a time, the local villagers changed from farmers and fishermen to "stone farmers".

According to Ah Fu's recollection, at that time, he didn't know how to identify, and all the stones that looked pleasing to the eye were moved home, and he didn't know how to maintain them, so he used peanut oil to maintain them.

But what surprised Ah Fu once again was that jade, which seemed to him to be very profitable a few years ago, has risen hundreds or thousands of times in the past two years, and the stones that were sold for hundreds of thousands at that time have risen to hundreds of thousands after processing.

In the second half of 2009, there were many merchants from Zhejiang who bought nearly 10 million yuan of Taishan jade.

"I don't know the bottom of the market, and I don't make much money," Ah Fu told Kowloon, saying that farmers digging stones are trying their luck, and they are very hard and do not make much money. And the dozens of operators in the village, one person collects hundreds of stones, and earns a difference of more than hundreds of times.

Kowloon is very clear that the main link is in the small number of local resellers who know the details, and there are also those who specialize in this business in the Huanglongyu production area.

Jiangxi Boss Guo, who has been making building materials and stones in Taishan for several years, saw the rising momentum of yellow wax stone and Taishan jade, and also abandoned the building materials and hired several farmers in the local area to start a jade business.

Ah Fu watched Boss Guo get rich, and he was also moved

Ah Fu decided to "take a gamble" and contracted the bay with his uncle.

"If I had come to dig jade a few years ago, I would have been a multi-millionaire by now. ”

This beach was dug up by the original owner to "tens of millions" of jade.

When he was almost done, the boss put it down.

Fortunately, Ah Fu was lucky, and not long ago, Ah Fu's own jade pavilion also opened smoothly.

After digging stones for more than ten years, he was finally able to become his own boss and become a member of the local jade association.

"Now the amount is very small, and it is getting harder and harder to dig. ”

Ah Fu and Jiulong calculated the cost, to use the hook machine to dig jade, the hook machine a day to rent 2000 yuan, fuel consumption 1000 yuan, but also to hire 5 helpers, when you are lucky, you can earn a thousand, if you are unlucky, you will lose.

Even if the difficulty of mining has increased, there are still many bosses from other places who have joined the ranks of mining.

According to Afu, there are nearly ten bosses in the main production area of Taishan jade, and nearly 10 kilometers of beaches have been turned over and over again, and the deepest is more than 10 meters.

Ah Rong, a friend of Ah Fu, also joined the team of jade business, Ah Rong used to be fond of gambling, opened a local trust company, and he used gambling as an analogy when dealing with capital all his life, saying that if his eyesight is not good, or he can't carve good jade, he may lose all his money.

"The main production areas of Taishan jade have almost been dug up, and in less than three years, the entire jade in Taishan may be gone. ”

Ah Fu said worriedly.

It's not just Ah Fu who is worried, how to promote Taishan jade and realize the transformation from resources to craftsmanship has become a difficult problem for the local jade association.

Ah Fu said that in Beiqiu Town, where Naqin is located, there are hundreds of strange stone and jade museums, but there is only one carver, and he is from Fujian.

Most of the Taishan jade was carved in Fujian, followed by Sihui in Guangdong.

"The point is that it hasn't been hyped,"

Ah Fu believes that Taishan jade is still in the early stage of development, and there is no hype of Shoushan stone and Huanglongyu, and the price has soared in recent years, which is also driven by the latter two, and it is still much cheaper than other jade of the same quality.

On the issue of "hype", Ah Fu also has his own opinions, he believes that the promotion of Taishan jade should still be based on restoring the truth and speaking with quality.

"Under the promotion of industry associations, Taishan jade has also held regular exhibitions and auctions recently, but at present, it is mainly in Taishan, Jiangmen and Zhongshan, and its influence is relatively limited. ”

On the other hand, due to the wide distribution of jade in Taishan, with the increasing depletion of jade in Sanshiwan and Huanghuawan, the mining position began to turn to the nearby mountains and spread to Yangdong County on the border with Taishan.

Located in Pingdi Village, Dongping Town, Yangdong County, the Shuanghuai pit near Huanghuawan is older than other mountain ranges, so there is more vegetation.

Some experts told me that the quantity of seed material in amphorae is small and the quality is fine, and the price is difficult to estimate.

"The mining of Taishan jade is still in the spontaneous stage. ”

Ah Fu told Kowloon that after the individual boss contracted a certain plot of land to the village collective, he could start mining.