Fortune hunting

To compensate her regret and to seek another opportunity for fortune, Wang now travels three or four times a year from her home in Urumqi, capital of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, to the birthplace of jade a thousand miles away.

Her destination is Hetian, a remote city on the west end of China's territory where a riverbed emerges every spring as the snow melts, carrying jade pebbles down from the Kunlun Mountains.

The river, known as the Yurungkash or White Jade, is the headwater of Hetian's jade industry and has made the city a mecca for Wang and other dealers, collectors and speculators.

Although their enthusiasm was nearly the same, the prospectors who flocked to Hetian showed no reverence for something long considered sacred.

"The situation was most serious in 2006, when there were more than 8,000 excavating machines and 50,000 people digging along the 30-kilometer-long riverbed day and night, trying their luck," Wang said. "People would invest hundreds of thousands of yuan buying machines and hiring workers, but all the effort would pay off once they found a sizable jade pebble."

A small village sprung up along the river, with hundreds of tents and cook shops scattered around the digging site. The garbage they produced piled up, and their excavation reshaped the river, causing flood hazards.

The frenzy was stopped in 2007 when local government dispersed the illegal residents and banned any more mechanized exploration on the riverbank to prevent further environmental damage.

"But the restriction has only made the jade price increase even faster, because it significantly reduced production and pushed the scarcity value of the existing pieces even higher," Wang said.

"There will always be supply, only the digging now goes underground. Even with helicopters patrolling the area, some people still find a way to get access, under cover of river dredging projects, for instance."

The value of a jade pebble of acceptable quality can triple even before it is shipped out of Hetian, Wang said.