Every July we spend two weeks in Ruili, on the Yunnan border, where the jade for next year’s Aurora Edit gets chosen. Some notes from this year’s trip.
The market opens before six. Serious buying happens in the first two hours, by daylight — every stone looks better under a lamp, and everyone knows it. Our carver, Mr. Duan, rejects roughly thirty stones for every one he keeps. His test has not changed in the eleven years we have worked together: hold it to the light, tap it, listen. Good jade rings; filled or treated stone thuds.
This matters because most jade on the market is treated — bleached, filled or dyed — and looks convincing for about two years before it clouds. Grade-A means none of that, which is why we insist on it and why the certificate ships in the box.
What we brought back: enough pale green for about two hundred bracelets, a batch with an unusual honey tint we have not offered before, and one large block that made Mr. Duan go quiet for a full minute. That last one is being carved now. It will surface in the Dusk Archive eventually — we will write about it here first.