Gu Tong and Qian Mingyuan's faces also changed, and Gu Tong spoke: "It should be a wolf." ”

Qian Mingyuan also spoke: "The wolves in this season have plenty of food, so there shouldn't be much danger. ”

"Alright, let's gather some dry branches and take turns keeping vigil tonight." Han Peacock made a decision.

Several people nodded at the same time, they were too careless a few days ago, and now that they have discovered the danger, they naturally have to be vigilant.

After collecting a lot of dry firewood, Han Peacock stood on the edge of the tent, looking into the distance, he could only faintly see the dark outline of the woods at the edge of the peak, as if a lurking giant beast was opening its mouth, waiting to devour them.

On the other hand, Huangshan also became more and more worried the more he looked at it, and he also raised his vigilance.

Han Peacock frowned, the frowning atmosphere was indeed wrong, he thought about it, and released the two ghost-faced Tibetan mastiffs from the space.

The black lion and the lion king looked around alertly, sniffed the air around them, roared in a low voice, and lay quietly at the door of the tent.

Not far away, Gu Tong and Qian Mingyuan were still looking for dry firewood, but when they approached the edge of the woods, they often slowed down.

Although Wei Changqing, who was following behind, was a stranger, he was a little scared in his heart, he had long known that there were wild wolves in the mountains, but he didn't expect to really encounter it today.

One or two Wei Changqing can still deal with it, if there are three or five, he can't bear it, the evil tigers are afraid of wolves, and the wolf's group hunting skills are quite superb.

When night fell, everyone gathered in a tent and had eaten, but no one said to go to sleep.

Although I was tired for a day, no one felt the slightest sleepiness at this time.

There was a campfire outside, lights inside, plus the tent was full of stones. Seven people were huddled together, so no one was afraid.

Since no one wants to sleep, it is natural to study those stones, as long as they find a rough stone that is not good, they will have to cut it tomorrow, and what they will bring back is a stubborn stone.

In Qian Mingyuan's opinion. This year, the price of Hetian jade has risen a little crazy, he pointed to a piece of material and asked Wei Changqing: "Xiaowei, what do you think of this material?" ”

The material in front of Wei Changqing's eyes was very white, but the texture didn't seem to be as moist as other Hetian jade, but Wei Changqing couldn't see any difference in him.

Qian Mingyuan said with a smile: "This is mountain material, so there must be a jade mine near where this mountain material is found." ”

"Mountain material?" Han Peacock curiously took the piece of jade and looked at it carefully. If it is really a mountain material, then it means that this piece of rough stone has not been rolled into the river for a long time, that is, this jade mine is not far from them.

Qian Mingyuan said: "This kind of jade material is very similar to 95 material, 95 material was not a good jade material, but in recent years, it has been hyped hot." Therefore, even if a 95-material jade mine is found. That's a huge bonus as well. ”

"95 material?" Wei Changqing and the others really hadn't heard of this kind of jade.

"This kind of material is called 95 material, it has only appeared in the last one or two years, people did not recognize it before, such as the capital jade factory such a large jade processing enterprise, never into such material, but in recent years, 95 material has been hyped because of the high white color." Qian Mingyuan explained.

After Qian Mingyuan explained. Han Peacock knew that in 95 years, the Qi family of Yu and Tian County in Hetian pit produced a batch of high-quality Hetian jade mountain materials, and the jade quality was good, called 95 materials.

Speaking of 95 materials, it was not only Qian Mingyuan who sighed. Gu Tong and Wei Changqing also sighed at the same time.

The increase in the turnover rate of jade and the hoarding of jade are also the main reasons for the soaring price of Hetian jade.

Because the people who dig jade are basically Uyghurs, jade is first traded in the hands of Uyghurs, and it usually takes a few hands before it reaches the hands of Han jade dealers, and then sells it to jade shops or the mainland.

The more people who trade jade, the more it changes hands, and the higher the price rises.

Nowadays, there are many companies that blindly pursue first-hand materials, thinking that taking materials directly from Uyghurs can save a lot of money by leaving the middle merchants behind.

This is also an important reason for the current market price surge, in fact, the final victim is the major jewelry companies themselves.

At present, there are already many Uyghur people, who are not very willing to trade with people in the industry, and have to "hang" something first, and wait for the "rookie" to come, and open an outrageous price.

"Elder Qian, since you are so knowledgeable, why haven't you developed in Hetian?" Wei Changqing sighed when he saw that Qian Mingyuan talked about Hetian Yu every time, and this time he finally couldn't help but ask.

Qian Mingyuan sighed again and said: "It's getting worse and worse over there, and now the government is very strict in supervision, even if you are a native, you can't mine jade at will." ”

In fact, Qian Mingyuan didn't make it clear that not everyone can't dig jade, but people who have no relationship can't dig anymore.

Now the jade mining over there has become construction, Hetian jade is gone, and the wind and sand are coming

Hetian jade has indeed brought wealth to the people of Hetian, and now, in addition to digging jade, Hotan City is selling jade, and 70% of the people in some townships are engaged in work related to Hetian jade.

On the streets of Hotan City, you can often see luxury cars and high-end off-road vehicles, but who would have thought that a few years ago, this was a poor area that relied on state relief?

But this change did not come without a price.

Today, Hotan City is home to people from all over the country, including tourists, collectors, real estate merchants, and even clothing sellers and fruit pourers.

These people were all attracted to one thing, and that was Hetian Yu.

However, while bringing wealth, Hetian jade also brought wind-blown sand and the depletion of water sources.

Hetian jade is distributed in the northern slope of Kunlun Mountain, which stretches for 1,500 kilometers in Xin/Jiangsha/Che-Kashgarku/Ergan, Hotan-Yu/Khotan, and And/Moxian County, with a total of 9 origins.

Such a large area can't stand people's crazy excavation, even if Han Peacock didn't go to Hotan in person, he could imagine what the local ecological environment would be destroyed.

"If the discovery of jade here is exposed, no matter how bad the natural conditions here are, it will become lively here." Gu Tong looked at the mountains outside and said.

"There's no way around it, but the natural conditions are limited here, and it's almost impossible to dig like crazy in Watan." Qianming is far away.

"I hope this place won't be like Hetian!" Wei Changqing said.

Although he said this, he himself did not have much self-confidence, in recent years, with the rise in the price of jade, more and more people digging jade, and the way of digging jade has also changed.

On the Yulong Kashgar River, on the bank of more than 20 kilometers, a total of 3,000 excavators roared at the same time.

The number of jade diggers has reached millions, repeating a movement on the dam, rummaging through the stones freshly dug out by the excavator.

These people, including Hotan locals, as well as people from Ku/Erle, Ye/Cheng, Ka/Shi, or A/Kesu, all came to the Yulong Kashgar River with the dream of getting rich overnight.

The initial rise in the price of jade stimulated the rapid expansion of mining, while predatory mining further stimulated the nerves of collectors, and the price of jade soared further, and the digging of jade fell into further frenzy.

Nearly 100 kilometers of riverbed in the upper reaches of the Yulong Kashgar River is covered with criss-crossing tunnels left by large excavators.

In each construction section, the excavation depth reaches the bottom of the riverbed, and the pebble layer that has been accumulated over thousands of years and is about 3 to 10 meters thick has been turned over, and then carefully screened, not only the seeds as small as the size of peanuts will not be let go, but even the strange stones with a little characteristics have also been put away, and the whole riverbed is like a vast infrastructure construction site.

This kind of indiscriminate mining and indiscriminate digging has caused the Yulong Kashgar River, which is rich in Hetian jade, to be riddled with holes, and the ecological vegetation has been severely destroyed.

If this kind of predatory exploitation of resources is not banned, the Hetian jade that has been deposited in the riverbed for hundreds of millions of years will be exhausted.

Trenches on both sides of the Yulong Kashgar River not only destroyed the original ecological vegetation, but also caused a lot of soil erosion.

Han Peacock changed the topic and said, "Old Gu, you know a lot about this place, how widely do you think the jade mines here can be distributed?" ”

Gu Tong pondered for a while and said: "Hetian jade is born in the mountain rock at an altitude of 3,500 meters to 5,000 meters above sea level, and after long-term differentiation and peeling into fragments of different sizes, it collapses on the mountain slope, and then flows into the river by rainwater.

If this is the case here, there are probably jade mines scattered around the surrounding peaks, so we still have a lot of work to do to find the veins. ”

Everyone looked at the surrounding mountains, there can be gravel rolling down the peaks in the river, there are really a lot of around, if you want to find jade mines in these mountains, it is better to pick up ready-made ones in the river!

"There are many varieties of jade we found today, including red jade, black jade, jasper, and white jade, needless to say, just this situation is enough to show that there must be more than one jade ore spot around, so that there may be jade veins distributed on the surrounding peaks." Qian Mingyuan said.

The economic value of jade is assessed on the basis of color and texture purity, and its main varieties are: white jade, mutton fat white jade, Qingtian jade, green jade, topaz, sugar jade, black jade and jasper.

Jade has been mined here for 7,000 years, and the ancient way of quarrying has been passed down for thousands of years.

The mountain materials are quarried in Kunlun above 4,000 meters above sea level, the sub-materials are mined from the riverbed, the ancient jade farmers are picking jade on the riverbank, fishing for jade in the river, turning the ground by hand, at most only half a meter deep, repeatedly searching on the river for dozens of kilometers, and Hotan over there, has been collected for thousands of years.

People envy the beauty of flowers, but they don't know how many hardships it has to go through in order for it to bloom at that moment. ”

We only know how to appreciate the beauty of jade and the brilliance of jade, but we don't see the hardships of jade pickers, and we don't know the thrilling legend behind it.

Only by immersively feeling the personal experience of a jade miner can I realize that every piece of jade is hard-won. (To be continued......)