XUEBAODING: Pingwu County, Sichuan Province, China

This locality's specimens of intensely orange scheelite crystals associated with large cassiterite crystals and with tabular beryl have, of course, become famous during the past ten years. Before that, the scheelite and cassiterite found here were treated merely as ore, unfortunately. But the farmers of the region received very scant compensation for their hard work as miners, and as they came to realize that they could earn many times more money by collecting minimally damaged mineral specimens, they learned quickly to accommodate the requirements of collectors. Whereas previously nearly all of the scheelite crystals had been found by washing the loose detritus, with only very limited collecting from the country rock, some of the workers now turned their attention to the tunnel workings. Recognizing that other minerals which occurred here were of interest also, and therefore were valuable, they came to pay increasing attention to minerals less commonly seen in the workings, e.g. fluorite and apatite, and to rare species such as kësterite.

The major collecting site is marked by quartz veins cropping out on steep hill slopes. Some of the veins which were fully exposed on the rock faces were worked at first by simple methods, but presently the deposit must be worked through underground tunnels. The timber line in the Minshan Mountains is at about 3,300 meters elevation; at the collecting site, between 4,000 and 4,500 meters high, there is only moss and lichen. Despite the high elevation the locality is free of snow between May and roughly the end of October. In August, at 4,000 meters, the daytime temperature is around 20° C and the nighttime temperature somewhat over 10° C. Because of the monsoons the summer months are very rainy; dry, frost-free weather arrives in September and October.

Having visited this locality personally, I can offer some further details. Mining activities take place in an area of about 4 square kilometers, at an elevation between 4,000 and 4,500 meters, on the south slope of the Xuebaoding massif. The nearest mountain peak with its own name is the 5,440-meter-high Xiaoxuebaoding (the "Xiao" prefix means "little"). According to the accounts of local people, there are other collecting sites in the mountains west of Huya, in the direction of Songpan; however, no detailed information about them is available. For the specimens offered on the worldwide mineral market, no special mine names are given, and as a rule it is not known from which particular working a given specimen has come. It seems most advisable simply to give "Xuebaoding" as the locality. It should be remembered that the occurrence lies within a nature-conservation area subject to strict rules. A conversation in May 2004 with the chief executive of Pingwu County and with the director of the conservation area established that the mining activities are being watched with critical concern, and that a forced termination of them is not out of the question.

One mine which lies at an elevation of 4,480 meters can be reached from Zhibaisha by an acclimatized person in two hours. There, two quartz veins only 10 meters apart are worked in an underground operation. The longer, horizontal tunnel is 2 to 3 meters high and about 200 meters long. The mine's relatively young owner, Zheng Bo, works here along with six other people, including a young woman. The roughly 50-year-old Huang Kai Hua, who runs another mine in the immediate area, is a pioneer of ore mining at Xuebaoding, where he began about 30 years ago to gather ore, particularly scheelite. He became aware of the value of mineral specimens in the Western world when China opened up after 1990. Individual tunnel workings here have no special names. The area is simply called Shuijingchang, which means, approximately, "crystal mine." No electrical generators are available, so the work underground must proceed by candlelight.