Where does Lantian jade come from?

Lantian jade is distributed in the vicinity of Yuchuan and Hongxing Townships in Lantian County, Shaanxi Province, about 35 kilometers from the county seat. The mining site is located in the Tamagawa Mountains behind Gongwangling, which is easy to mine and has convenient transportation. Lantian jade is one of the four famous jade in ancient China. There are many records in ancient books. "Han Geography" says that Meiyu is produced from "Jingbei (now Xi'an North) Lantian Mountain"; later, "Han Han Shu Wai Chuan" Zhang Heng's "Xijing Fu", "Guang Ya", "Shui Jing Zhu" and "Yuanhe County Map" and other ancient books have records of Lantian jade.

The history of the development and utilization of Lantian jade is very early. From the archaeological data, the earliest piece of Lantian jade is a pale yellow serpentine jade unearthed from the Western Zhou cemetery in Zhangjiapo, west of Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, about 3,000 years ago. Within the scope of the Mausoleum of the Emperor Wudi Mausoleum, a four-grain jade pavilion was unearthed and carved with a complete piece of apple green jade. It is 34.2 in height, 35.6 in width, 14.7 cm in thickness and weighs 10.6 kg. It is carved into the front of the animal face. The lines, the eyes and the nose, the teeth are exposed, the image is very fierce, and the image of the dragon, white tiger, Suzaku, and Xuanwu is embossed on both sides of the animal face.

In the Ming Dynasty, Song Yingxing said in the "Heavenly Creations": "The so-called Lantian, that is, the Congling Mountains (Kunlun Mountain) is the alias of jade, and then mistakenly thought that Xi'an Lantian also." This statement should be wrong. It may be because in the Ming Dynasty, because the mines were mined, the later generations could not find them. They questioned the "Lantian Maize", and speculated that Lantian was only a jade distribution center, not a jade. Ground. In 1978, geologists discovered serpentine petrochemical marble jade in Lantian County, Shaanxi Province. Compared with the unearthed cultural relics of the Han Dynasty, it was considered to be the ancient recorded Lantian jade. Although there is still controversy about whether the ancient Lantian jade is the current Lantian jade, most scholars believe that the Lantian jade discovered today is the Lantian jade described in the ancient books such as Han Shu.

Lantian jade is called “dish jade”. It has a hard texture, colorful color, lustrous texture and fine texture. It is mainly serpentine petrochemical marble, mineral composition calcite, serpentine and a small amount of tremolite, chlorite, etc., the hardness is generally less than Mohs 6 degrees, the color is white, gray white, yellow, yellow green, gray green, green and black, etc., mostly opaque, it is characterized by a variety of colors mixed together to form a colorful color. There are four main categories from the varieties and conventions: Lantian Moyu, Lantian Jianghuayu, Lantian Furongyu, and Lantian Wrapped Jade.