TONGBEI Spessartine Localities, Fujian Province, China

摘要

In 1998, Chinese dealers offered the mineral market's first specimens of beautiful red Chinese garnet crystals associated with smoky quartz and feldspar. The locality repeatedly cited was the city of Lechang in the north of Guangdong Province, close to the border with Hunan. However, even after intensive questioning, the dealers who had the material gave no further information regarding the land of occurrence, or its precise location. This vagueness was hardly believable in view of the fact that the city of Lechang lies only about 150 km south of the regional capital city of Chenzhou, and in the neighborhood of that city lie the mines of Yaogangxian and Xianghualing, both very important in the mineral trade, and both routine destinations of the dealers. In the following years, increasing numbers of these very distinctive specimens appeared on the market, and at the end of 2001, for the first time, a few dealers gave the province of Fujian as the true locality, and Yunxiao as the nearest large city. By this time several Chinese dealers had been to the locality themselves, and it could no longer remain secret. In the meantime, many thousands of garnet/ quartz specimens, large and small, had been sold all over the world.