3. In search of mineral crystals in western China


By Xuepeng Liu, May 2009

It was a warm early summer in Beijing when my friend Lee and I decided to start our journey to western China's Shanxi province to search and stock up on mineral crystals. Western China is crisscrossed with high mountain ranges. The most well known of these is the Himalayas, but there are many. Beryl and rock crystals grow in abundance in the mountain caves of Western China - they are usually found in the caverns above 4200 meters (around fifteen thousand feet, or just under half the height of Mount Everest). We are determined to reach the source of these crystals.

We hopped in our 10 year old Cherokee jeep and started our 2000 mile journey across China. After 3 days of rutted, flooded roads, detours, washed out bridges, and lungfuls of air thickened by black coal dust, we finally crossed the province border. People walking along the side of the road look at us curiously, and breathing gets harder as the air gets thinner. I get an odd feeling of jamais vu-a sense that I have never been here before, although I know I have. The effect is disquieting, and it plays on my nerves, making me edgy and a little snappish.

base camp

We reached the base camp at Bao Ding mountain. We are about 9000 feet above sea level and the dusk is falling - the lowlight is coming. We set up camp among five or six other tents already pitched. We locate a depression in the rocks. The rocks look secure and the ditch will serve to break some of the bitter, frigid wind. It took the two of us four hours to set up our single tent, but now we will have a temporary home. We'll be spending the next week in these mountains.

the tent

The next morning when we wake up, our tent is all covered in snow. I am freezing from inside out - the cold rips through me, cutting and burning. I wait eagerly for the coming of the sun.

We wolf down breakfast, pack our supplies and follow behind our guide who knows where the caves are. The guide is a local guy in his thirties. His skin is thick and brown from the weather and sun. His arms are knotted like tree trunks of solid muscle - his forearms are as hard as rocks and as big around as my calves. He speaks almost not at all but knows the mountains well enough to navigate them in his sleep. The air is getting thinner and our guide has to wait for us from time to time. After three hours of solid climbing, our guide finally said, "We are here, you can see the caves up there."

Xuepeng Liu on the mountains

We are in a low and narrow cave formed by rock movements that created fissures in the earth. The cracks are big enough for people to walk in. Underneath the earth and rocks, where the temperature and pressure is high enough, the crystals will form. Later rock movements bring these crystals to the surface where curious people like us came into the caves and discovered them.

Once inside the cave, we turn on our flashlights and start looking for crystals. They are not in the obvious opens. We have to look hard, behind and under other rocks. The cave is deep and dark. I can hear the fragile, thunderous echo of my own breathing. Thanks to our guide's experience, we find our first beryl crystal specimen underneath another rock. It takes quite some effort to break it off the rock bed. I can't see clearly what it looks like under the dim flash light. We keep searching and find two more.

Finally we get out of the cave, I hold the crystals in my own hands. My heart races like the heart of a rabbit when I lay my eyes on them. These beryl crystals look raw and natural. The crystals are clear like the water from a spring. The afternoon sunshine shoots through them and refracts along the edges. I look deep inside the crystals; it seems like it contains all of the colors in a rainbow, and some, I almost think, from outside of one.

beryl crystals with mica

We kept going back to the caves for the next week and collected more crystals. Our guide told us that there was a town called PingXiang at the foot of mountains. People in the town mine these crystals and we should find more there.

We left the base camp a week later and came into PingXiang town. There are a lot merchants selling these crystals in the markets. We bought enough to load our Jeep with them, so many that the extra weight provided good traction for the car on the journey home It's much easier this way to stock up but the experience of discovering them ourselves is priceless. I promise myself that I will soon be back to Ping Xiang - and that someday, I will return to the dark caves in the mountains.