Chapter 1: The Jade Gambling Trap
The blade spins at 3,000 RPM, and the experienced craftsman holds the stone bare-handed, pressing it against the saw blade.
The blade, mere centimeters from his fingers, rotates at dizzying speed, grinding against the jade with an ear-piercing screech. The cooling water sprays onto the cut, churning into a hazy mist of dust and droplets.
The jade rotates slowly in the craftsman's hands. The grinding noise continues. The crowd around holds its collective breath—holding breath not because of the dust or mist, but from the anxious anticipation of the outcome of this jade gambling session. As the saying goes: "One cut makes you poor, one cut makes you rich, one cut leaves you in mourning clothes." Every stone could hold a surprise, and every stone could bankrupt you.
It was past nine in the evening at Delong Night Market. I'd finished dinner and come to wander around. The narrow aisle was hard to walk through—both sides were packed with stalls.
The night market had no proper lighting. In the dim, stall-crowded corridor, packed with people, nearly everyone carried a flashlight. The beams crisscrossed haphazardly across both sides of the path, stretching for hundreds of meters with no end in sight. Every stall sold only one thing.
Jade.
Raw jade, with its outer layer of stone and mud called the "rind."
The jade sold here fell into two categories. One type came with the rocky outer layer, called "rind" by those in the trade—these were raw jade stones, known in the business as "gambling stones." The other type had already been cut in half into "open-cut stones" or sliced into thin pieces awaiting processing, known as "clear stones." As the name implied, clear stones revealed their interior clearly—you could see the texture, transparency, and color at a glance, and prices were negotiated based on experience.
Stones cut from raw jade were called "open-cut stones," while thin slices were called "slab stones."
I'd barely been walking for a few minutes when I witnessed a completed transaction. A buyer had taken a liking to a black-skinned Momojang raw stone, quite small but visibly decent quality. Momojang was a mine site near Mo Gang, most with cement rinds and good water content—gambling on the color inside.
By the time I approached the stall, the buyer had already decided and was haggling. The vendor opened at 20,000 and was immediately lowballed to 2,000—such wildly divergent starting prices were perfectly normal in jade gambling. Eventually, both sides agreed on 7,000 yuan. The small Momojang stone was sent to the cutting craftsman.
My master had once told me that young jade carvers like me were only allowed to buy slab stones. If you could look at a piece and figure out what to carve from it, then buy it. Only clear stones were permitted—not even half-cut stones, because those were still "half-gambling stones" with a degree of uncertainty. As for raw stones like this small one with their rinds intact, the trade called them "full gambling stones"—you had no way of knowing whether heaven or hell awaited inside.
The old saying went: "Even immortals cannot judge an inch of jade." That was jade gambling for you.
Just as I was recalling my master's instructions, the grinding noise stopped. Everyone turned toward the machine. A heart-rending curse immediately followed. Clearly, a losing cut. I muttered to myself: "You could buy a nice finished piece for 7,000 yuan. Why bother cutting a stone?"
Just as I was about to leave, a voice drifted over from beside me: "You wouldn't be saying that if this stone cut 700,000 worth of jade."
I looked toward the voice. At the same moment, a dark figure approached and smacked my backside.
A familiar figure came into view. This person—I knew him well.
If immortals couldn't judge an inch of jade, then he was even more formidable than the immortals—a man who could truly read jade: Uncle Harvey.
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Actually, Uncle Harvey wasn't anyone's uncle. He was an '80s-born older brother, just a few years ahead of us '90s kids, but he loved playing the elder. The moment Uncle Harvey opened his mouth, out came lines like, "I lived through the fall of the Soviet Union and the Cultural Revolution. Back then, you were still just sperm."
I really liked Uncle Harvey, because he was genuinely impressive. Even though his generation had collectively hit their forties, in the traditional circle of jade carvers, they were still considered the younger crowd. As a "junior," Uncle Harvey had made a name for himself early, collecting every major award the country could bestow on a jade carver—the Tiangong Award, the Shengong Award, the Baihua Award—he swept them all. His pieces were both critically acclaimed and commercially successful.
And Uncle Harvey hadn't used his jade carving money to open a workshop. Instead, he'd gone into the jade gambling business. What did that mean?
It meant he had money.
But if you saw Uncle Harvey on the street, you'd never connect him to "wealthy person." At this moment, he was wearing a white T-shirt, stepping in Myanmar-made flip-flops, carrying a satchel. The satchel was large and rectangular, made of garishly colored synthetic fabric with a terribly cheap texture. But it wasn't a Chinese-made woven bag—these were hand-woven by Myanmar people, looking rough and rustic.
In Ruili, if you saw someone carrying this kind of bag, you knew they were here to buy stones. Because it was sturdy, capacious, durable, and—with its tacky appearance—inconspicuous. Over time, it became an unspoken standard; everyone used these bags to carry heavy, precious stones.
Uncle Harvey noticed me staring at his bag and laughed. "They call this bag the Ruili Hermès."
"The Hermès" looked quite light—probably hadn't bought what he wanted yet. I asked him, "Why come to Delong for materials? It's late."
"I'm accompanying a friend," Uncle Harvey said, introducing the man in a tailored suit beside him. "This is Mr. Xu. He's an old friend of mine, always looked after me."
I quickly said, "Nice to meet you, Mr. Xu."
Mr. Xu seemed a bit cold, barely nodding at me.
Uncle Harvey introduced me: "This is Zane, a rising star jade carver in our workshop, a disciple of Master Wells."
Only at the mention of my master's name did Mr. Xu show some interest. "Oh, Zane, nice to meet you."
I tagged along with Uncle Harvey through the night market. Whenever Uncle Harvey was around, I always tried to stay close—not just because we got along, but because he was the only senior who told me the truth. Following Uncle Harvey, I learned so much.
But Delong Night Market was indeed crowded. He and Mr. Xu walked ahead while I trailed behind, listening to their casual chat.
"Since we're here, you've got to help me pick a good stone today!"
Uncle Harvey said, "If Mr. Xu asked me to pick women, I'd truly be useless. But stones? No problem at all."
Old Harvey cracked a few jokes, then got down to business, examining the stones carefully. I walked behind them, shining my flashlight at the stalls on both sides. Uncle Harvey's flashlight beam moved quickly, seemingly needing only half a second per stone. But occasionally, the light would linger on a particular stone for ten seconds or more. He'd pick some up to examine, but never asked about prices.
We passed about twenty stalls before Uncle Harvey stopped. He picked up a sizable raw stone with one hand. I leaned in to look: grayish-black rind, very fine sand particles under the flashlight, squarely shaped, clearly dense and heavy. Any larger, and he wouldn't have been able to hold it with one hand.
"Min, is this from Houtin?" Uncle Harvey asked the Myanmar vendor across from him.
"Yes! This one cuts well! You buy, boss?"
"How much?"
Min named 170,000. After Uncle Harvey's haggling, the price came down to 90,000. Mr. Xu nodded, giving his tacit approval. He didn't understand stones, but he trusted Uncle Harvey. If Uncle Harvey picked it, it couldn't be wrong. He unhesitatingly pulled out his phone to pay. But paying was its own problem—Min didn't accept mobile payments. He had a smartphone, but neither the green nor blue payment apps, and of course no card-swiping POS machines.
I asked him, "Why not set up mobile payment? It's much more convenient for doing business in China?"
Min replied, "We, old Myanmar, they won't let us withdraw cash."
In the few moments we'd been chatting, Uncle Harvey had already pulled bundle after bundle of cash from his "Ruili Hermès." Nine bundles in total, handed to Min. Min patted the bundles of money against the stone, a gesture of gratitude. Then he waved, calling over a girl who'd been sitting on the ground behind the stall. The girl got up, took the money, and counted it expertly.
"I'll transfer it to you," Mr. Xu offered quickly.
"No worries, it's fine. Mr. Xu, look at this stone..." Uncle Harvey pointed at the stone.
He was pointing at an inconspicuous ridge on the stone's surface. But following his finger and looking carefully, I realized this ridge wound and coiled, traversing almost the entire stone—though sometimes visible, sometimes not. If Uncle Harvey hadn't pointed it out in this dark night market, I'd never have noticed it.
Uncle Harvey ran his fingers along the ridge until he found a spot where the protrusion was more pronounced. He stopped and shone his flashlight at a peculiar angle. Even a fool could understand now. Under that strange angle of light, the ridge emitted a faint, ghostly green glow!
An inconspicuous color ridge on a raw jade stone is known in the trade as a "color python."