This is a question new customers often ask. And it's a good question to ask.
Sometimes people send me an email with a photo of a jade piece and ask if it's real jade. The only way to truly know
is to have a gemology test, usually a refraction test.
Jade selling used to be a very honorable business in China. But since the turn of the century, several factors have turned some of the jade business into another for-profit only fake-fraud-counterfeit business. And I have to admit the first jade bangle bracelet I purchased in China when i was on a tour during my first visit was not real jade. It was what is called
"Malay jade", quartzite dyed apple green. So I do empathize with your doubts about getting "real jade". There is so much fake, color treated jade in the market now, on ebay and in Chinatowns, that many people don't even know what real,
natural jade looks like. Since I always wear a jade bangle bracelet, when I come in contact with people who are also wearing one, and they show it off to me, I truly struggle with what I should say when it's obvious to me that it is C grade,
acid washed and color treated. I decided that if their jade makes them happy, I am not going to tell them anything
negative about their beloved jade piece.
I fell in love with jade on my first flight to China, when I saw a jade bangle on a flight attendant's wrist. I kept looking at, and couldn't get it out of my mind. I just had to get one like it.
My first trip to China in 1999 was with a qigong group to learn Chinese medicine in Beijing. It was a private group with my qigong master from Cleveland and the tour guide was a friend-of-a-friend he knew in Beijing when he lived there. We learned about Daoism, which is the basis of Chinese medicine, yin and yang, and feng shui. The Chinese medicine treatments I received, and learned, were extremely beneficial to me, that I decided to go back to China two months later when he arranged a two week trip and tour of China. After the second trip, I knew I was going to return to China, learn
more about Chinese medicine and China, so I found a Chinese language tutor and learned Mandarin for my next trip a
few months later. On my own.
The first thing I needed when I arrived in Beijing on my solo third trip was a Chinese medicine treatment for jet lag, and I
had arranged in advance to schedule a Chinese doctor to meet me at the hotel for acupuncture. Part of the treatment included gua sha, and he started working on my back with a jade gua sha tool, and as I started feeling much better, he explained about the qi energy in jade. We got along very well, and he agreed to teach me more in exchange for me to
teach him yoga and Reiki. He arranged a train trip to Dandong and then to Liaoning province to meet with a "jade man"
who also spoke some English, and we visited the jade market to see what kind of jade was available for wellness,
including the jade gua sha, jade rollers, jade "needles" for acupuncture without needles, and much more. And of course, jade bangle bracelets and pendants and jewelry. I came home with a lot of new knowledge about jade and Chinese medicine, and half a suitcase of jade. That's how Ying Yu Jade started.
You will notice on the Ying Yu Jade web site, most of the items include the qi energy in the description. That's my personal commitment to sell only pure and natural jade, the kind of jade I use myself. I have been a Reiki master for a long time,
I grow herbs for healing and wellness, and practice taiji and qigong, and yoga, regularly.
After my first solo trip, I decided to work three more years at my "regular job" and use every extra dollar I earned to buy
more jade, especially the more expensive jadeite mined in Burma. I went to webmaster school, built the web site, and started selling the few things I brought back with me. I went to China every summer, learned more, bought more, but in between visits I bought jade from people I had met in China who would bargain and buy for me. Then when I left my
"real job" to work online full time, although I had a very large inventory of jadeite bangle bracelets and pendants, I started buying all the jade personally in China. I met one of the leaders of the southern jade association in Sihui, a major jade
city in China, and he taught me more about choosing good quality A grade jadeite, and how to test it. I traveled by train,
bus and lots of walking to remote jade centers to watch the carvers making their jade products from the jadeite stone,
and bought directly from them. That's how I know that the jadeite I purchased is pure, natural and A grade.
Then in 2008 the Lantos Law Jadeite embargo took effect, and it became illegal for USA and other other countries to import jadeite from Burma. I had bought boxes and boxes of jadeite prior to the Lantos law, not because I knew it was coming but because I saw the price on jadeite rising, and the quality getting lower. That's because the jadeite mines were closing due to the politcal/military actions in Burma. As of this writing, the Lantos embargo is still in effect. If you live in
USA and buy a jadeite bangle bracelet from a Chinese seller on ebay, you are in fact breaking the law and your jade
could be confiscated when it goes through customs. The reality is that it rarely happens but I do get phone calls from customs when my boxes of Chinese jade are being inspected wanting to know why I have a box full of "marbles" which seem suspicious to them. That's funny, because they are in fact jade ben wa balls for womens kegel exercise.
Ying Yu Jade offers a Guarantee of Authenticity for all the jade we sell. If you purchase an item, and find out it is not jade,
you will get a complete refund. We have lab equipment here and test each piece of jade by refraction when it is being photographed and listed on the web site. A Certificate of Authenticity is also available to purchase. If you do not think your jade is "real", you can get it tested by a GIA gemologist, and we will accept that signed certificate. We don't accept other opinions, from friends, families, the manicurist, only GIA because my jade associate in China uses the GIA gemology
model for the jadeite they work with. We have never, and will never sell fake jade.
It's possible that some of the jadeite my associates in China purchased for me was color treated, even though the certification they provided me stated it was A grade natural. When I am not sure if the jade is color treated, it gets put
on our JadeBangleBracelets web site at lower prices. Although I have jade that is certified as A grade, I have also been
a victim of Chinese fraud. If the qi energy doesn't feel right, it goes on JBB web site. Jadeite on YYJ is
the jade I personally purchased in those remote jade cities in China, directly from the jade carvers.
And if you get your jade, and you just don't like it, and it doesn't work for you, we always accept returns unless otherwise stated in the description. . You can read our policies. It's costly for small business to sell online, so our restocking fees
cover our costs. I personally try to make return or exchange as easy as possible for you. And I treat people the way
I want to be treated.
So if you sent me an email asking "is your jade real", this is the page I refer you to because it explains why we sell the
good quality jade, and my personal commitment to doing so. Many of our customers wear "jade as medicine" and
jade has to be real and natural for you to get the benefits of the jade qi.
July 2014
