On the way to the carved jade factory in Beijing, the tour guide showed us her jade bangle bracelet and explained that it was a gift from her mother when she (the tour guide) got married. Those bangles are traditional because as the story goes, back in the day, when a woman married into the man’s family, she moved away from her parents and rarely was able to travel the distance to visit them. The best quality jade, called jadeite, is referred to as a “living stone” because happiness causes us to secrete a certain hormone or natural skin oils that over time absorb into the jadeite and makes the stone shinier and more translucent. The mother would need only a glance at her daughter’s jadeite bracelet once every few years to see whether she’d been happy in her husband’s household. If the daughter’s bracelet remains cloudy and opaque, the mother could smack her son-in-law upside the head. That’s the story, I didn’t do research on the properties of this stone.

I found the story irresistable. So at the jade factory, I bargained on a fine piece of jadeite. It was a bangle, the type I’d never wanted to wear before because I thought it made a loud statement about me to the effect of “Hi, I’m fresh off the boat!” But there was just something about this piece — the surface had a silvery ripply sheen underneath that reminded me of fish scales, and the colors faded from light green to milky white to a rare pastel purple. It was amazing, it was jadeite, and it was A quality jadeite. Jadeite, we were told, ranged from AAA (best) to A, B, then C. B quality may be artificially enhanced by injection to remove some of the internal cracks; C quality may be dyed. The A range is natural, rare, and harder than standard jade. The opening ticket was $900 US dollars. I got it down to $650, and then $600.

I was happy, until I got to Shanghai toward the end of the trip and met up with my dad’s friends, and my mom’s grandma’s friend. Dad’s friends said I overpaid and it was worth less than $100; that I was the victim of a tourist “scam.” I explained I bought the piece in a government store and that it was guaranteed to be real, whereas on the streets, altho I could get it cheaper, I did not know my jade well enough to know I wasn’t being ripped off with a piece of glass. They said crooks reside both in and outside of the “official” stores. Oh well. The bracelet is supposed to appraise for $1100 in the States, so maybe I’ll check that out. They also laughed when I said it’s supposed to get more translucent over time. They said it’s impossible; a stone’s a stone, and the more translucent it is upon purchase, the more valuable, and mine was cloudy. But some of these guys were restaurant owners, and they didn’t even look closer at my bracelet than across a large round dinner table. I felt worse, though, when my grandmother’s friend, who owns a jewelry business, said I overpaid by about 15 times what I could’ve gotten it for if I were a local. My parents, however, comforted me saying it really was a beautiful piece with rare color variations, and even tho the cost was high, these people who said I was scammed wouldn’t necessarily be able to find me a piece like that, and since it’s cheaper than what I’d pay for it if it were purchased here, then as long as I’m happy and enjoy my purchase, it was all good. My mom also confirmed that it was absolutely true jadeite grows more translucent with daily wear. And I’d thought my parents would yell at me, too. They said they, like all tourists, were tricked into overpaying for everything also when they went on their China tours. “Why didn’t you warn me?!” I wailed. My mom said, “I DID warn you! I told you, ‘Don’t buy anything!’ ” Oh, like that told me anything.

Lidya bought a better quality (more expensive) jadeite bangle than me, and the day after climbing the Great Wall she woke up in the morning to see that there was a crack in the bracelet. She was upset about that, but wore the bracelet anyway. The last few days of the trip, she mistepped in a restaurant and went down hard on her right knee, cracking her knee cap on the hard floor. A x-ray in Shanghai revealed a fracture in her kneecap. She was out of commission for the next 2 days until we came home, casted from hip to ankle. Her perspective on that incident was, “Isn’t jade supposed to protect you?” Yes it is. You’re supposed to wear it on your left wrist because it’s closer to your heart that way, and purifies the blood that flows through your veins on its way back to the heart. It’s also supposed to protect you from harm. “Maybe the bracelet cracked because it gave its life early to protect me, maybe I’m supposed to have a compound fracture, or break my leg or something worse, and the jadeite broke in order to take some of the damage so that all I had happen was a kneecap fracture,” she mused. This woman is inspiring. I love that romantic, optimistic concept.