Uighrs and Han Chinese trade jade at outdoor bazaar in Khotan, Xinjiang province, China, in 2010.Shiho Fukada/The New York Times
In China, jade is a symbol of purity and a ward against evil. The green gemstone was so highly valued for jewellery, sculptures and amulets that China depleted its stock of nephrite–one of two types of jade—in the 1700s. Demand then switched to jadeite. But 90 per cent of that stone is mined in Myanmar, under brutal conditions. Then came the 2008 Beijing Olympics and, with them, a burst of national pride. China began hailing nephrite as its true jade. Demand soared.
As it happens, 90 per cent of the world's nephrite lies in British Columbia's Cassiar Mountains. It's shatterproof and hard as steel (the Salish were making tools from it 4,000 years ago). Today, B.C. miners sell roughly 900 tonnes of jade to China each year and could be exporting far more if they could pull it out of the ground fast enough. There's no fixed price for jade—it can fetch between $20 and $2,000 a kilogram, depending on the quality and the buyer.
The largest chunk–a 32-tonne boulder mined by Surrey-based Jade West Group—was sold to the Wat Wat Dhammamongkol Monastery in Bangkok for $350,000 and was carved into a giant Buddha that stands (or, rather, sits cross-legged) 9.1 metres high.