Hpakant lies in the hills of Kachin State, northern Myanmar, approximately one hundred kilometres from the Chinese border.

This region produces more than ninety percent of the world’s jadeite. The mining history reaches back to the thirteenth century, but large-scale extraction began in earnest during British colonial rule. After annexing Upper Burma in 1885, the British quickly recognised Hpakant’s value. They built a road from Hpakant to Myitkyina, constructed warehouses and weighing stations, and established a dedicated jade taxation authority. Every stone leaving the mining area had to be registered, weighed, and taxed. In some years, the revenue the colonial government extracted from the jade trade accounted for more than a third of northern Burma’s fiscal income.

After the British left, control of Hpakant began moving between competing forces. The Kachin Independence Army — the KIA — was founded in 1961, initially to pursue Kachin autonomy, but quickly recognised that controlling the Hpakant mining area meant a stable source of revenue. In 1994, the KIA signed a ceasefire agreement with the Myanmar military. The agreement included a clause on the distribution of mining revenues; the specific figures were never made public. In 2011, the ceasefire collapsed and fighting resumed, with the Hpakant mining area once again becoming a negotiating chip. After 2018, effective control of the mining area was divided among multiple armed factions and the Myanmar military, with boundaries unclear and rules opaque.

In November 2015, a large landslide struck the Hpakant mining area. The official death toll was 116. Actual estimates were higher. Most of those who died were jade scavengers — people who entered the waste dumps after the formal mines closed for the day, searching for overlooked good material. The waste dumps become unstable after absorbing rainwater during the monsoon season, but the scavengers do not stop working, because good material genuinely does appear in the dumps. This is an open secret. The landslide happened in the early hours of the morning. Most of the people were asleep.

Jadeite is hard jade, composed primarily of sodium aluminium pyroxene, with a hardness of 6.5 to 7. Its colour comes from chromium — chromium ions replacing aluminium ions in the crystal structure, absorbing the red and yellow portions of the spectrum and allowing green to pass through. Chromium concentration determines colour depth; distribution determines whether the colour is even. Within a single rough stone, sections where chromium is evenly distributed will yield solid green when cut; sections where it is uneven will yield mottled green. The price difference between the two can be tenfold or more.

Transparency is a separate dimension. The trade vocabulary runs from nuòzhǒng — glutinous, semi-translucent, light entering but not passing through — to bīngzhǒng, ice grade, where transparency is high enough to see internal structure and light refracts within the stone, to bōlízhǒng, glass grade, almost completely transparent, extremely rare. Colour and transparency are independent variables. Material that scores well on both can be worth hundreds of times more than material that scores poorly on both.

Hpakant miners work in tunnels tens of metres underground. In the narrowest sections, they move sideways. They use headlamps to examine freshly cut stone. The rough surface is covered in a weathered skin that obscures colour and quality; they wash off the mud and hold the stone sideways against the light, reading the degree of translucency through the skin. Experienced miners run a fingernail across the surface and feel the resistance — higher resistance suggests higher density, which may indicate better transparency. But this assessment has limits. Before the stone is cut, no one can be certain what is inside. Hpakant has a dedicated rough stone gambling market where buyers purchase uncut material and accept whatever is revealed when it is opened. A stone purchased for tens of thousands of yuan might open to reveal ice-grade solid green worth millions, or worthless waste. Both outcomes happen regularly.

Myanmar’s official statistics put Hpakant’s annual jade output value at approximately one billion US dollars. Industry estimates place the real figure at ten times that. The difference moves through Ruili, the largest jade trading hub on the China-Myanmar border, where significant volumes of unregistered rough stone and finished goods cross daily by various means. The checkpoints on both sides of the border are aware of this volume. Enforcement intensity fluctuates with the political climate.

From the tunnels of Hpakant to the stone markets of Ruili, the distance is approximately five hundred kilometres. The hands and ledgers in between each have their own way of setting a price.