Stories about Unique Stones in My Collection
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I have collected stones for over 30 years. Each stone in my collection has a story to tell. These stories are integral part of the collection. The following are some interesting stories about the stones.
A Fish Fossil
The name of Stone Fish Mountain first appeared in “Annotations on Book of Rivers” by Li Daoyuan (466-527), a great geographer. The original 10,000-word-long book has brief accounts of 137 rivers in China. Li Daoyuan added a great amount of annotations to the book. His 40-volume “Annotations on Books of Rivers” is about 300,000 words long and has records of 1,389 rivers. Li Daoyuan mentions the mountain because a river flows past it. It is a detailed account of fishes in the stone. These stone fishes are actually fish fossils embedded in rocks of the mountain.
Many collectors covet fish fossils from the mountain, but such precious items are hard to come by. I have never seen a single fish fossil from the mountain. I once visited some friends there and my disappointment was easy to understand when I learned that the fish fossils there had long been mined empty. But I have managed to have a fish fossil in my collection. It does not come from the mountain. It is from Brazil.
In April 2007, Li Jian, a Chinese oil painter now living in USA, came back to visit Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. I took him and his wife around the city and then to Zhangjiajie for two days. I found time to interview the painter during the two days and later produced a long report about the master and his career accomplishment in USA. Readers reacted enthusiastically to the report.
After learning that I was a collector of precious stones, Li Jian and his wife brought me a special fish fossil from USA the second time they came to visit Changsha. It turned out that they had received the gift in Brazil from an overseas Chinese living in the South American country. The old man appreciated Li’s painting, thinking the established artist was the pride of China and reminded him of his ancestral roots in the oriental home country.
Today, the fish fossil stays quietly in my collection. It is 45 centimeters long and 6 centimeters wide, showing the complete tale, fins, and fish scales. I am doubly proud of this gift because I know Zhang Daqian, a famous 20th-century Chinese master painter, donated a similar fish fossil to the Palace Museum in Taipei, also from Brazil.
The Stone from the Earthquake-Hit Sichuan
Among the precious stones in my collection is a special gift from Wenchuan, the epicenter of the killer quake on May 12, 2008. Wen Jingbang is an author I have known years. He lived in the earthquake area. After the bad news of the earthquake seized the whole nation, I became instantly worried about him. I dialed his telephone every day praying he would answer the phone. On the morning of the sixth day after the quake, my call was answered. I was almost weeping. We talked and excited. He told me that when the earthquake struck, he was at home writing. Aware of what was happening, he shouted and got the whole family rushing out of the apartment on the second floor. The building did not crash, but it was declared dangerous. He ventured back home to get his manuscripts when the phone rang. I congratulated him for his survival and wished his writing of a war novel would proceed smoothly. He thanked me for my concern.
Two months later, I received a package from Sichuan. Inside the pack was a cap-sized stone from Wen Jingbang. There was a brief note. He made a trip to a river beach at Dujiangyan, a key city near the epicenter in western Sichuan. The stone looks like a felt cap of the Qiang ethnic minority people. He knew I am a stone collector. He told me in the note that Dujiangyan, a world cultural heritage site, was seriously damaged by the earthquake. The stone he sent me signifies both the earthquake and the unflagging will to come back from the disaster and continue to build a life. He said he would continue to work at his manuscript.
A Round Stone from Taiwan
On the display shelf at home is a round pebble from a beach in Taiwan. It looks full and smooth in tender yellow color. What is more, it has a shape on it that looks like a full moon. The full moon is a sign for family reunion in China. Thinking of Taiwan, I have a tender emotion for the stone.
The stone came from a colleague. Over my 30-year pursuit of precious stones, I have had in my collection a plethora of precious gems, many from all over the country and more than 10 from overseas. I tried in vain to find a good stone specimen from the island province. I kept thinking about it and believed it was a sad regret. I talked about my wish at a get-together organized by my former employer. Early this spring, I unexpectedly received a phone call from Li Shaoqian, a retired editor and my former colleague. She said she had a stone for me from Taiwan. It turned out that during her relative-visiting trip to Taiwan, she managed to find time to drive all the way with her relatives and a priest in his 80s and his wife to visit a beach at Xinzhu. It was a special trip to find an appropriate stone for me! They picked about 30 stones. Li Shaoqian chose one for me largely because of the moon-shaped circle on the pebble.