Fluorite from Wuyi

Item description / significance
This is a group of seven fluorite display objects, each on a wooden stand:

  • A mostly green polished sphere with a purple stripe (stand can rotate)
  • A smooth translucent purple lizard carving
  • A rough purple and green lizard carving with white crystals
  • A bright green translucent “kryptonite” natural crystal formation
  • A sparkly purple natural crystal formation
  • A polished slice of purple and green fluorite with white “feathers”
  • A purple three-legged “wealth toad” carving

Bought where
in Wuyi, Zhejiang Province, China, in a shop inside a residential complex

Age and origin
basically new, from Wuyi

What I like about them
There are so many kinds of fluorite… each of these pieces has unique characteristics in terms of color, texture, shape, size, and interaction with light, thus they attracted me for different reasons. The polished flat slice is the thing that struck me first, and seemed unique in the shop; the pure bright green crystal caught Siqi’s attention; the sphere has a purely symmetrical shape and smooth texture that minimizes distraction from the stone’s colors; I wanted a piece that showcases chaotic sparkly square crystals; and I wanted at least one animal carving.

Other notes
I bought two lizards even though I usually don’t buy two similar items. The logic is, if I buy two similar things, then I will probably wind up liking one more than the other, and the less-liked one will cause regret by seeming redundant. I decided that the lizards were both spectacular enough, each in its own way, and that I’d regret leaving either of them behind.

See below for more on how we found the shop where I got all this stuff, and photos of the items. In particular, the crystal on the far left really is bright green, though it doesn’t look green at all in the photo above!

Continue reading Fluorite from Wuyi

“English” on signs in Wuyi and Jinhua

Below are five funny English text samples I saw on a brief road trip with my husband Siqi and his parents to Wuyi, Zhejiang Province (a city with a population of 460,000). On our way back to Hangzhou, we passed through Jinhua, Zhejiang Province (a city with a metro area population of 1,258,000).

Continue reading “English” on signs in Wuyi and Jinhua

Wuyi Fluorite Museum

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)
Guanyin statue outside the museum

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

Trip to Wuyi, Zhejiang Province

I live in China. I’ve had the thought that while I’m here, I should look into buying minerals that are mined locally, since presumably such treasures can be had for a fraction of the price they sell for after being exported.

I had the impression that China is known globally as a source of fluorite. I did an online search, and went to a geological museum in Hangzhou, and learned that the county of Wuyi (population 462,462), which belongs to the city of Jinhua, has fluorite mines and a fluorite museum. Therefore, during the Chinese New Year Holiday, I went with my cooperative husband and in-laws to Wuyi in search of beautiful stones. I assumed, since Wuyi has fluorite mines and a fluorite museum, that it also had shops selling fluorite products. If it does, we couldn’t find them! Nevertheless, our road trip shopping quest was successful.

The trip is documented in this post and five others:

We stayed two nights (February 1 and February 2) in the Vienna International Hotel in Wuyi. There are… 26 miscellaneous photos from the trip below.

Continue reading Trip to Wuyi, Zhejiang Province

Places visited in 2024

Siqi and I visited 2 European countries and approximately 9 cities in China in 2024. I took thousands of photos on my phone! The road trip that Siqi and I went on with my parents was particularly special. See below for an illustrated summary of where we went when.

Continue reading Places visited in 2024

“English” on signs

I included some funny English signs in the post about the journey to Longquan; I saw a lot all in on the same day, mostly in the same place. But I saw and took photos of others in various other places. Rather than put them in posts about those places, I’ve collected the rest of the strange English signs here. Enjoy!

Continue reading “English” on signs

Sightseeing in Shanghai

My parents’ visit is coming to an end, and they will shortly fly off from Shanghai Pudong Airport back to the US (via Seoul), and Siqi and I will return to our home and respective offices Hangzhou. But we have time to see a few more sights before we part.

See below for photos of The Bund and Yu Old Street (including some from 2010!), plus a couple of Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station, where Siqi and I caught the train back to Hangzhou.

Continue reading Sightseeing in Shanghai

The Shanghai Museum

Although the Wikipedia article hasn’t realized it yet, there are currently *two* Shanghai Museum locations: the old one on People’s Square on the west bank of the river in Huangpu District, which opened in 1996 and is shaped like a ding (an ancient round bronze cooking vessel), and the extremely new huge rectangular one in the east in Pudong New Area, which opened in phases in 2024 (February, June, December). The museum (in both incarnations) is dedicated to ancient Chinese art, and has galleries displaying bronze, calligraphy, paintings, seals (stamps or chops), ceramics, numismatics, and jade. It is waaay too big to see everything in one visit!

On our visit to the new location in the east, we borrowed some audioguide devices and went through the ceramics gallery and the jade gallery—and that was all we had time and energy for before dinner.

Casting around for a restaurant, we wound up at what turns out to be Tripadvisor’s first-ranked mid-range dinner restaurant recommendation for the whole city of Shanghai! It’s a Turkish restaurant called Efes, and it was fantastic.

See below for photos of the museum, lots of porcelain, and a bit of jade. Plus, read about what I discovered when I looked through photos from my visit to the old Shanghai Museum in 2010.

Continue reading The Shanghai Museum