Much of the jadeite which delighted the 19th-century Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi and still pleases her modern compatriots comes from Myanmar, whose “imperial jade” is the world’s most valuable and is highly sought-after for its near-transparent emerald-green hues. (Jadeite, which is rare, comes from Myanmar; what is thought of as Chinese jade is in fact the more common nephrite.)
But the grandeur of China’s Imperial Palace is a far cry from the mining towns in northern Myanmar. Here the ye ma say (hand-pickers) scratch a living in difficult conditions, searching for jadeite through waste dumped by mining companies on the blackened hills of the world’s largest jadeite mining region, Hpakant, in Kachin state. Whatever they find, they sell back to traders and miners.
According to a 2015 report on Myanmar’s jade trade from campaigning organisation Global Witness, most of the jadeite extracted from Hpakant is smuggled to China to avoid tariffs. Global Witness’ investigations into the value of jade mined in Myanmar have suggested that it may have been as high as $31bn in 2014 alone — half of the country’s GDP, or 46 times government spending on healthcare. At the annual jade emporium in 2014, a single boulder of it was given a reserve price of €60m, according to an unpublished report.