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- capture Yarkand and Kashgar in 1759. Thus, the whole of eastern Turkestan came under the control of Qianlong. It came to be known as Xinjiang or �New Dominion� and a century later in 1882-84 became a province of China. When Zhao Hui led his victorious army home with captives after pacifying eastern Turkestan, he was personally greeted by the emperor outside of Beijing and showered with honours and marks of imperial favour.14
These wars in Xinjiang had been very costly and the Chinese empire had only been able to afford them because of its unprecedented prosperity.
For the next sixty years, peace reigned in the jade region, and the transport route to China�s east was safer than it had ever been. These conditions combined with an insatiable demand for jade by the imperial palace and wealthy individuals caused a tremendous boom in the jade carving industry.
The jade market no longer had to rely on the irregular supplies from local chief�tains, their jade supply was now direct. Officials were sent to Turkestan to carefully supervise the collecting of jade, which was transported to Beijing by stages under imperial escort as tribute to the emperor. The jade sent from Khotan and Yarkand consisted of two types: river jade and mountain jade, which was often of uneven quality.
The river jade, also known as child jade, was collected by the Moslims each year in the autumn when the level of the river was low. An account entitled Xiyu Wenjian Lu (Observations from the Western Regions) by Qi Shiyi on river jade was published in 1778. It records �The jade is found in the rivers of Khotan. Boulder jade obtained from the rivers may be as big as a bucket or small as one�s fist or a chestnut. Some weigh three or four hundred catties (1 catty is equal to 1 and one-third pounds), and they vary widely in colour. Some are snow-white, some cui-green, beeswax-yellow, cinnabar-red, or black as Chinese ink. All these are choice. Other kinds, �mutton-fat� white with red spots and spinach- green streaked with bronze, are still scarcer. The whole river-bed is covered with stones, large and small, some of which are jade. When collecting is in progress, an official supervises on the far bank, and an officer of the garrison on the near side. Experienced natives, Moslims, are engaged and deployed in ranks of twenty or thirty, shoulder to shoulder across the stream, in which they advance barefoot over the stones. Whenever one of them encounters a jade with his foot, he recognizes it, stoops down and picks it up. When he reaches the bank, a soldier strikes a gong, the officer makes a red mark on a tally, and the native delivers the jade. Payment is made accordingly.�15
The other type of jade was called mountain or quarried jade. After the snow on the mountains in the jade region melted, the Moslims would climb the mountains to quarry jade. Some of the largest pieces were over 9,000 catties. The number of labourers quarrying the jade was sometimes over 3,000. These people tended to quarry at the spur of the moment and not at any set time. The Xiyu Wenjian Lu also has a passage on mountain jade: �Two hundred and thirty li from Yarkand there is mountain called Mount Mirtagh. The whole mountain is full of jade of various col�ours, but the jade and rock are closely compacted. If jade of a single colour, with�out blemish, and from 1,000 to 10,000 catties in weight is required, it must be sought among the highest and most inaccessible peaks. The local yaks are ac�customed to climb them, so the Moslims take their tools, ride up on their yaks, ply their hammers and chisels, then let the jade fall by its own weight, and so take it. This is called �skimming the stone�, and the material is called �mountain stone�.�16
Jade carvers preferred river jade to the quarried jade, as it tended to be freer of flaws. Also from an economic point of view, river jade was cheaper since quarried
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