Twin Gold Towers' dragon-stone jadeite had weathered its "return to the market" crisis, and thanks to Uncle Harvey's intervention, the rumors gradually faded. The stock price was stabilized. Uncle Harvey said that as a reward, he was taking me on a vacation to Tengchong. Good food, good drinks, pure fun. No work.
I said sure.
"Here we are—the Guanfang Hotel!" Uncle Harvey set his suitcase on the ground, patted the trunk of the car, and signaled the driver to go park.
"Didn't you promise the best hotel? I saw that Tengchong has these super-luxury hot spring villas! Whole villas with five bedrooms, two living rooms, private courtyards and hot springs. Why not book one of those?"
Uncle Harvey gave a crooked smile and said slowly, "Damn, Zach, you want to soak me."
"Oh, for..." I couldn't even. "I want to soak in the hot spring, okay?"
"Two grown men, nothing to soak in. And the most expensive isn't always the best. The Guanfang is the most prestigious. Since the 1980s, it's always been the best hotel in Tengchong. Those resorts you mentioned charge high prices, but they're all newly built on the outskirts, not even in the city center."
"Got it. We're staying where the old money stays. *Old money*."
"And it's more than just old money. My teacher Philip Garrett invested in this hotel. It was just renovated last year."
"I didn't even know you had a teacher? A jade-carving teacher?"
Uncle Harvey grinned. "Of course. Even the Monkey King needed a teacher. Did you think I taught myself?"
"I kind of did."
"High praise."
"And your teacher is seriously rich! Does he live in Ruili?"
"No, he lives in Guangzhou. But wherever there's jadeite, he has property."
"That impressive?"
"Come on, let's go eat first. I'll tell you about him over dinner."
Dinner was at a small streetside restaurant—the kind that in Sichuan would be called a "fly joint."
The oil stains on the floor had been trampled by diners into a dark, glossy patina. Seeing my somewhat queasy expression, Uncle Harvey told me with great confidence: "Old oil is an old restaurant's badge of honor. Don't be put off by how it looks—you'll see how delicious it is!"
First came two plates of grilled meat—grilled pork belly and grilled pork skin. Tengchong's black pork had an excellent natural flavor. The belly was perfectly marbled, grilled until the fat sizzled and the aroma wafted. The pork skin turned soft and sticky after grilling, yielding with a single bite, tender and gelatinous. After grilling, they were sprinkled with cumin, chili, Sichuan pepper, scallions, some green herbs I couldn't name, and finally a handful of golden "imperial rice" for seasoning.
It really was delicious.
Then came a bowl of *sheng pa hu*. *Pa* means soft in the local dialect, and *pa hu* means soft and squishy. The most famous adjective for men in southwest China is *pa erduo*—"soft ears"—meaning "henpecked." I always found the term both vivid and clever. How many times must a man's ears be twisted by his wife before they become permanently soft? The thought makes you smile.
*Sheng pa hu* was a soup dish. Beef bone broth simmered since morning—its rich fattiness tempered by fresh mint, the collagen aromatics sparked by chili. The soup held beef, beef tendon, beef tripe, and offal, all simmered until fork-tender. One bite and the deep beef flavor bloomed across the palate, layered herbal spices creating a complex freshness that was simply magnificent together.
Uncle Harvey and I each had a bottle of Myanmar Beer, sitting on little stools in the evening breeze, utterly content.
As I ate, I noticed the restaurant's row of hanging beef jerky—*niu gan ba*. The warm breeze made the *gan ba* sway gently. The aerial roots of a great banyan tree swayed too, and in the distance, the setting sun burned the blue-purple horizon red. I thought to myself: this is truly a peaceful, comfortable city.
"Want some beef jerky?"
"No, just looking."
"Hey, boss!" Uncle Harvey called out, waving his hand. "How much for the beef jerky?"
"Eighty yuan a strip, over a *jin* each."
"How much for all of it?" Uncle Harvey gestured broadly. "Everything you've got, give us a good price."
The boss broke into a hearty grin. "Hang on, boss! Let me calculate!"
"Pack two strips in a bag, and ship the rest to Beijing."
"My god, that's too much. I can't eat all that!"
"Give some to your family too. The stuff sold online isn't authentic."
"I won't say no then. Thanks, Uncle Harvey!"
"Is this your first time in Tengchong, Zach?"
"Yes. Before, I'd only ever heard of Tengchong in anti-Japanese war dramas on TV."
"Tengchong was the hometown of three generations of jadeite kings. Starting from the late Qing dynasty, there were legendary fortunes made in the jadeite trade. The Qing dynasty jadeite king Garrett Baoting had wealth to rival nations and single-handedly funded the anti-Japanese war effort."
"Ha ha, Uncle Harvey," I interrupted impatiently. "You sound like a history teacher. Stop with all this. Tell me about your teacher."
"Old stories are important. Do you know about Sterling Legacy Jade?"
"Sterling Legacy Jade? Sounds familiar?"
"Then you don't know. No worries, I'll tell you." Uncle Harvey took a sip of Myanmar Beer and launched into the story of Sterling Legacy Jade.
---
The owner of Sterling Legacy Jade was Dominic Sterling, from Sterling Lane in Situolou, Tengchong. The Duan surname was that of the Dali royal family—there were plenty of people named Duan in Yunnan—but Dominic Sterling's branch was not an illustrious one. He made his living in the jadeite trade, purchasing a piece of raw jadeite from Mogok weighing over 300 *jin*, covered in a white sandstone skin. After he brought it back to Tengchong, every expert declared it worthless. Dominic Sterling lost heart and used the stone as a hitching post for horses.
Later, when he fell on hard times, his horse suddenly had a fit and kicked the stone hard with its hoof, knocking off a piece of the skin to reveal specks of crystalline green! Dominic Sterling noticed this and immediately had the stone cut open. It was flawless and free of cracks, and at its heart lay a thick slab of glass-grade jadeite with water-grass patterns in vivid yang-green.
The bangles made from this jadeite were like pools of emerald water with fresh green water-grass floating within—both color and translucency present, their artistry transcendent. The most expensive pair of bangles was sold to a prominent family in Shanghai for a thousand silver dollars! In those days, even in expensive Beijing or Shanghai, sixty *jin* of rice cost just one silver dollar, and a maid's monthly wage was two silver dollars. Sterling Legacy Jade was thus named.
"Uncle Harvey, what's the point of this old story? Sterling Legacy Jade has nothing to do with us."
"Nothing to do with us? Your master's fortune is intimately connected to the Sterling family's legacy."
"What!? What do you mean?"
"Your master's first pot of gold was inseparable from the Sterling family's inheritance."
"Is Master Wells a descendant of the Sterling family?"
"Heh heh. Aren't old stories good to hear?"
My gossipy instinct ignited instantly. I had to own it: "Uncle Harvey, I sincerely beseech you."
"What? Now you think old stories are worth listening to?"
"I was wrong. I admit it. I sincerely beseech you."
"Good!" Uncle Harvey stuffed the last piece of grilled pork skin into his mouth and chewed as he asked: "What kind of jadeite did Qing dynasty people like to collect?"
Antiques were my area of expertise, so this didn't trip me up: "The old-timers judged jadeite by color alone, not texture. Qing dynasty court jadeite was mostly bean-grade—if judged by today's standards, the texture and transparency would be considered poor. But as long as it had color, it was valued."
"So when the old-timers cut stones, was everything that came out green and purple bean-grade? What about the colorless pieces? The blue-water? The black jadeite?"
"I'd never thought about it that way. Where did they go?"
"Thrown away," Uncle Harvey said, wiping his mouth. "Colorless ice-grade, glass-grade; blue-water, black jadeite—they just tossed it in the corner and swept it out with the garbage."
"That's so wasteful!"
"The people of that era didn't consider these valuable. But in modern hands, they are valuable. So people go and dig up this buried jadeite."
"Where was it thrown? Was it buried in a concentrated way, like a tomb? Or just scattered everywhere?"
Uncle Harvey nodded approvingly. "Both scenarios you described—they both happened."
"Is there still some around?"
"Long gone!"
"Who dug it all up?"
"Your master," Uncle Harvey said, slowing his pace, "and my master, used to come here and dig up this jadeite."
"Did my master make his fortune digging up old Tengchong jadeite?" The Master Wells I knew was the nationally renowned jade-carving master, the one who turned dross into gold, who'd built his wealth through the craft of jade carving. I had no idea Uncle Harvey knew so much about his past.
"Yes and no. Let me tell you an old story, slowly."
Tengchong's evening breeze was soft and warm, its streets quiet, its people unhurried. For a moment, it felt as though nothing had changed in a hundred years. Uncle Harvey told us the story of our two masters when they were young.
The ancient streets of Tengchong, over twenty years ago. Back then, Master Wells and Master Garrett were our age—still poor, still uncertain, still newly qualified jade carvers. Not Master Wells and Master Garrett—just young Wells and young Garrett.
Young Wells and young Garrett had come to Tengchong to buy jadeite—or more precisely, to "pick up bargains" in old jadeite material.