New Mexico Mineral Symposium — Abstracts

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Minerals from China are widely available for purchase and commonly seen at mineral shows across the US. In China, mineral specimens, which are almost exclusively from China, are seen in a variety of settings: geology museums, private collections, retail mineral-rock businesses, and traditional viewing rock (??) exhibitions. Between July 2008 and April 2013, I lived in Chengdu, Sichuan Province and had the opportunity to see Chinese minerals in these settings, do some field collecting and overcome the hurdles of assembling a library on Chinese minerals and pegmatites.

During the 1800–1900s, China advanced its tradition of natural found art–these are rocks, and sometimes minerals, that either have interesting artistic geometric shapes and colors or have shapes that resemble either man-made objects or living things–people, animals or plants. There are Chinese guidebooks on the naming, classification and valuation of viewing stones (the literal translation of ??, Qíshí, is strange stones).

Polishing, carving, and faceting of minerals has also continued, especially within their historic tradition of carved and polished jades. A word of caution: the Chinese word that is translated to jade, ? (yù), is also used for any rock or mineral that will form attractive masses after polishing. For example, a polished fine-grained purple lepidolite is referred to in translation as purple jade.

The collecting of crystals as art or minerals as scientific, intellectual curiosities started after Mao Zedong death in 1976 and the rise of Deng Xiaoping in 1978. Deng with the Eight Elders introduced the “reform and opening up” of China. As the governmental changes increased, travel to and within China has become both politically and physically easier, allowing for the development of domestic mineral dealers.

Chinese collectors prefer giant to large crystals or crystal groups. Value depends more on size than authenticity or quality. There is no negative value assigned to material that is polished, enhanced, fabricated, dyed, or repaired. Oiling of minerals or selling the minerals water-wet is a common practice. Color and form is everything. There is either little interest in knowing a specimen’s locality or provenance or else this information is concealed to protect the seller’s perceived business advantage.

Books, magazines, and technical articles on minerals, viewing stones, and pegmatites are obtained from used and newly-published bookstores, internet book sellers similar to Ebay or Amazon, geology museum stores, mineral shops, internet scientific article distributors (7 cents a digital page) and photocopies from libraries. Even if you cannot read Mandarin, there is much to be gained—maps, specimens, chemical analyses and geologic cross sections can be understood with little to no language knowledge. The literature is extensive. Although small-scale (such as less than 1:100,000) topographic and geologic maps are still prohibited to the average Chinese citizen and all non-Chinese citizens, whereas road and city maps are easy to purchase in markets and bookstores.

Museums of earth science materials are usually found associated with universities that have significant earth science research, provincial geological survey offices, or more recently places to attract domestic tourists. With a population that in 2013 was economically 25% middle class or above, the number of people who have discretionary recreational time (and perhaps money) exceeds 330 million, which is greater than the total U.S. population.
Minerals and viewing stones are sold from clusters of small shops (an unofficial shopping plaza), private homes and apartments where a room might be dedicated just to selling minerals, or in curio and weekly markets laid out on a blanket or small table. Giant and small viewing stones, and cave speleothems (that may have come from immense limestone quarries for cement and aggregate) are sold sometimes associated with stone carving/ granite slabbing industrial centers.

This presentation will tour museums (the Geological Museum of China in Beijing, Chengdu University of Technology museum, Hubei Geologic Museum, and the Yifu Museum of China University of Geosciences), the Guilin mineral and viewing stone markets, curio-art markets (Chengdu and Beijing), the Pixian stone carving-granite slabbing center in Sichuan Province, and collecting localities along the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau.

The easily available minerals to purchase in China are mostly the same as can be found in the major U.S.A. mineral shows—the supply-distribution routes from the mine to the market are the same. These include ore and gangue minerals from easily accessible mining areas from the coastal provinces such as calcites, fluorites, quartz, hematite, scheelite, pyrite, chalcopyrite and cinnabar, sedimentary minerals such as selenite, quartz and calcite, granite quarry minerals such as smoky quartz and some schist minerals such as dravite/schorl.

Minerals more likely to be seen in China than in the US include the topazes from Inner Mongolia, Yunnan and Hubei, beryls and tourmaline from Yunnan and Xinjiang and the less valuable pegmatite minerals from Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan and Xinjiang. Gem minerals that are common in certain areas of China—topaz, elbaite, beryl, and garnet will occasionally reach market areas. Scientific minerals such as pegmatite oxides, phosphates, and rare-earth/rare metal minerals, although common at the mine, do not have established distribution networks so that these materials are almost never seen for sale in China or outside its borders. Access to certain areas of China, such as Xinjiang, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, Xizang (Tibet), and Heilongjiang may be exceedingly difficult for both Chinese and non-Chinese due to both physical and political challenges. Time, travel and professional-personal friendships with the appropriate people can resolve most of these issues. The future will eventually bring an increasing abundance of mineral specimens, more numerous mineral species, and mineral knowledge from China to the world.