Wuyi Fluorite Museum : Some People Juggle Geese

There’s a trip.com page about this place, and a couple of stilted English-language news articles that mention it, and that’s all.

Hello, Wuyi Hot Spring Fluorite Museum!

The museum was two floors of rooms, laid out like this.

“Schematic diagram of the distribution of fluorite ore resources in China” and “Distribution map of fluorite despots in Wuyi Count” (inset)

See below for info on 4 Guinness World Records related to fluorite, and photos of the minerals on display.

Guinness World Records

The largest single fluorite stone, weight 94.7 metric tons.

“The fluorite raw stone was mined from the Xililang Mine in Wuyi, Zhejiang Province. It is 6 meters long, 3.6 meters wide, 2.6 meters high, and weighs 94.7 metric tons. The raw stone is light green, light purple, and other colors. Collected by Tang Chonggui and Zhou Cuifang, Wuyi, Zhejiang, in October 2014.”

It’s really huge. They polished away parts of the rough surface so you can see what it’s like on the inside.

Looks like an asteroid, but it came from inside the Earth, not outside the Earth!

The largest collection of fluorite and crystals, quantity: 11,860.

“Wuyi County Wuyang Chunlei Arts & Crafts Factory has been collecting red, yellow, green, white, pink and other colored fluorites and crystals (the largest is 1.8 x 1.2 x 0.5 meters, the smallest is 0.3 x 0.2 x 0.08 meters) since August 2000, and they are equipped with wooden bases.”

I’ve got photos of some of these awesome fluorite specimens below.

(The whole collection of 12,000 pieces isn’t in this room!)

The largest spherical stone ball, diameter 175 cm, weight 8.53 metric tons, refractive index 1.42.

“The fluorite ball is spherical, with a yellow-green surface and a protective coating. Collected by Wuyang Chunlei Arts & Crafts Factory, Wuyi County, Zhejiang Province in June 2001.”

There’s no English-language publicity about this at all. Most of the articles I found point to a 6-ton “night pearl” ball.

There’s another luminous fluorite “pearl” that’s 1.81 meters in diameter and weighs 10 tons!

The largest single crystal fluorite facet, weight: 748 carats.

“The fluorite facet is polygonal, light green, 7.6 cm long, 4.5cm wide, and 2.7cm thick. Collected on August 16, 2013.”

I think it’s talking about the blue gemstone in the case…

Fluorite

I’m not sure if all the photos here are fluorite; fluorite varies a lot in appearance, and this museum had other minerals too, and the labels were in Chinese. Also, some specimens are composed of more than one type of mineral. (Science is complicated.)

These are what I think of as typical colored fluorite stripes.

Fluorite and quartz. But it looks like an owl, or maybe a cat to me.

Fluorite with quartz. It looks like a soft material that has been repeatedly stabbed, but I guess that’s just how the crystals form.

Other Rocks and Minerals

Another gypsum/desert-rose type of crystal.

I don’t care much about fossils compared to minerals and some kinds of rocks, but I have a soft spot for crinoids. I used to find fragments of crinoid stems in the dirt in the yard at my grandparents house in Nashville, TN. They looked like stacks of coins. Strange to think a place so far from the ocean was once underwater.

“Fossil Leaves: For the first time, scientists have discovered a fossil leaf from 55 million years ago when the global climate was warming rapidly. They tell the story of the plants that lived on the earth during that period: the rapid warming of the climate caused the trees and shrubs that had settled in the south to move northward.” (So… 55 million years ago there were Ents—walking trees? J/K!)

Goodbye, Wuyi Hot Spring Fluorite Museum!

We visited the shop in the museum building, which had some pretty things, but I didn’t buy anything because I wasn’t sure what else we might find in Wuyi.