On Saturday, a piece of raw jade was auctioned off at a record
high bid of 1.51 million yuan (US$201,500) at the Beijing
International Exhibition Center.
The unpolished, white jade stone (Lot 4078), weighing 3.6
kilograms, was estimated to be 500,000 yuan (US$6,700).
The "Jade Mountain Floating Clouds" (Yu Lei Fu Yun) Auction was
the first time bidders battled it out for more than 300 top-quality
chunks of unrefined jade in China.
The pieces were procured from Hotan, in Northwest China's
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, according to Ba Zhenyu of Beijing
Boguan International Auctions, the largest auction house in China
specializing in jade.
Over the past two decades, the value of jade from the region has
reportedly increased 1,000-fold, and the increasingly skyward bids
issued at auctions in recent years have indicated a growing
interest in jadeware collection, says Hou Yancheng, a jade
collector, cultural heritage appraiser and director of China
Research Society of Ancient Jadeware.
At the 2007 Sotheby's Hong Kong autumn auction, which concluded
on October 9, the 6-centimeter "Tai Shang Huang Di" White Jade
Seal, carved in 1796 to mark the abdication of Emperor Qianlong of
the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), went to a Chinese collector for
US$5.92 million. The purchase set a new world record for auctioned
white jade.
But experts warn that inexperienced collectors could end up
spending huge sums on modern imitations.
Jin, a millionaire from East China's Zhejiang Province, who
refused to give his full name, has spent more than 10 million yuan
(US$1.3 million) on what he calls "a luxurious hobby" over the past
decade.
But the international trader's confidence in his collection
recently suffered a major blow. In late September, he brought about
100 of his favorite jade pieces to Beijing to apply to join the
First Exhibition of Ancient Jadeware from Private Collectors at the
China Millennium Monument.
However, the panel of experts responsible for the selection of
the exhibits determined that 90 percent of Jin's "ancient jade
items" were "modern or contemporary imitations".
"Jin's sad story is typical of numerous 'green hands' in the
world of jade collecting today," says Liang Xiuwei, vice-director
of the China Research Society of Ancient Jadeware and a veteran
connoisseur of ancient jadeware in Beijing. "Unprepared for the
pitfalls and market irregularities, they have suffered a lot, both
financially and psychologically."
Still, Liang predicts that the number of jade collectors in
China will continue to increase, with the art and antique markets
improving and the passage of new laws offering greater protection
to collectors.
"With the economic boom, more and more Chinese are casting their
eyes on a variety of traditional Chinese artworks, including ink
paintings, antique furnishings, bronzeware, porcelain and jadeware,
either for investment or for personal appreciation," Hou says.
Hou and Liang are key organizers of the exhibition of private
collectors' jadeware, which will tour cities, including Guangzhou,
Shanghai and Ji'nan in the coming months.
Three years ago, they founded the ancient jade research
organization, the first of its kind, affiliated with the All China
Federation of Industries and Businesses, which has so far attracted
some 2,000 members from across the country.
The society's mission is to promote public awareness of China's
jade culture, to monitor and research the jade market and help
private collectors find authentic jadeware.
The past five years have seen hundreds of thousands of curio and
antique markets of different sizes boom across the country.
In addition to the more than 30 widely circulated magazines and
newspapers about jewelry, art collection and investment, a slew of
new TV programs on these topics are finding their way onto the
airwaves.
The most popular among these include Gathering of
Treasure-holders (Jian Bao) on China Central Television's Channel 2
and Smashing Faked Treasures (Tianxia Baozang) on Beijing
Television's Channel 1, which is anchored by famous actor and art
connoisseur Wang Gang.
Wang has acted as an antiques dealer in Legends of the
Antiquarian Street (Wuyue Huaihua Xiang), a popular TV drama series
about antique dealers and art collectors who lived about a century
ago.
More recently, the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games medals, which are
bejeweled with jade, have further increased public awareness about
the precious stone, long respected by Chinese as "a symbol of
elegance, nobility and virtue", Hou says.
His team has been working on an ambitious campaign to promote
Chinese jade culture. They have been busy publishing relevant books
and catalogs, and organizing seminars, lectures and
exhibitions.
"The jade culture of China has a history spanning more than
7,000 years, and Chinese people have a long tradition of collecting
jadeware," Zhou Nanquan, research fellow with the Palace Museum,
says at a seminar on ancient jade collection staged in Beijing last
month.
"It is a fundamental and integral part of Chinese culture. Jade
artworks, especially well-preserved, ancient jadeware, are equally
precious and important as bronze and porcelain items in both
museums and private collections."
According to Zhou, owning jadeware was once the exclusive
privilege of tribe leaders, kings and emperors. Historically, jade
artworks were part of important ceremonies, rituals and
burials.
In addition to the new discoveries of ancient jadeware being
unearthed by archaeological excavations, large numbers of books and
illustrated plates about jadeware have been created over the
centuries, Zhou says.
However, for the first few decades of New China, jadeware pieces
were considered national treasures, and were off limits to the
common citizenry.
This started to change in late 2002, when the revised Law on
Cultural Heritages Protection was enacted, giving ordinary Chinese
the right to own and trade cultural heritages they inherited from
older generations or obtained through legal channels, former chief
of State Administration of Cultural Heritages Lu Jimin says. Lu
personally made many contributions to the revision of the law to
legalize private collections and facilitate the antiques trade in
China.
Hou's research society estimates the current number of jade
collectors in China to be in the millions.
To capture the attention of the jade-loving public, many jewelry
shops and markets have taken measures to expose fakes and
frauds.
The Beijing International Jewelry Exchange Center is among the
pioneering movement to guarantee that all of the jewelry bought at
the market can be returned, and purchasers would get their money
back within seven days. "And all the jadeware on sale at my market
must have certificates from State-authorized gem-testing agencies,"
says Li Zhong, deputy-general manager of the Beijing International
Jewelry Exchange Center.
(China Daily November 8, 2007)